Nothing like Nordic noir to cheer us up!

Stunning research in two studies, from Finland and Germany, has already been reported this year, both of which give a big boost to the heretical claim that kind people are much kinder – more caring in their feelings towards children and liked by them – than the present, all-pervasive, vilification suggests.

I’ll start with the one that looks at children’s own perceptions, not least because studies of this type are exceedingly rare, and provided they have been well conducted they are pure gold. This is a study based on the Finnish Child Victim Survey. That word “victim” doesn’t sound very promising, does it? But it was a survey with thousands of child participants, carried out in schools, that looked at children as victims of real crimes and mistreatment, such as theft and physical violence, as well as so-called “child sexual abuse” (CSA) by a much older person. Crucially, it was not assumed that the children would think they were victims. Instead, they were asked how they would characterise these contacts.

And guess what? Most 12-year-olds reported CSA as a positive experience. Go compare that with the dogma touted on sex offender courses that no child would ever want or enjoy it! More about the Finnish findings in a minute.

As for the German research, it is one of those big, prestigious, neuroscience affairs that might be completely wrong – this is cutting edge stuff, after all, looking at the most complex structure in the known universe, the human brain – but which we would be foolish to ignore. It is a paper by Jorge Ponseti, an established figure in the field, along with a team of no fewer than 18 co-authors. The take-away point from it for now is the study’s tentative conclusion that male paedophiles, far from being aggressive and rapacious, appear to have a stronger caring, nurturing response towards the young than other adult males. It is good to see science at last catching up with what many of us have known all our adult lives just by being aware of our own more tender feelings towards kids. In fairness to science, though, nearly three decades ago (and as the paper notes) the Austrian ethologist Irenäus Eibl-Eibesfeldt expressed a similar view, suggesting that paedophilia might in some cases be based on an “eroticization of parental love”.

The implications are obvious and could in future hardly be more profound for how paedophiles are viewed in society if this pioneering study’s findings are confirmed through further research. This is so important that it needs a separate blog, which I plan to bring out in due course.

Turning back to Finland, what we have is a 2018 paper based on the large (n = 11,364) population-based sample of sixth and ninth grade schoolchildren conducted in that country in 2013 and published in 2014 (in Finnish) as the Finnish Child Victim Survey. The paper, by Lahtinen et al., focused solely on the CSA data in the survey. The sixth graders were mostly aged 12 and the ninth graders mostly aged 15 at the time of the survey, which was completed on a voluntary classroom-by-classroom basis in schools across Finland. Respondents’ gender distribution was equal. So-called “abuse” by adults (perceived by some respondents as abusive but not by others) was based on the question “Have you ever experienced sexual advances or intercourse with an adult or a person at least 5 years older than you?” Follow-up questions were asked about the age of the respondent and age of the other person at the time of the events. Over 70% of the reported incidents involved actual sexual contact rather than a non-contact proposition or exhibitionism.

The children, answering the survey on classroom computers, were able to give their responses anonymously, without pressure from therapists or law enforcement sources, and without time for their memories to be overwritten by distorting influences at a later stage, as adults. So this procedure avoided any colouring added by the culturally imposed notion that children are asexual and “innocent”, or by the preconception that any sexual involvement with an adult must amount to “abuse”.

Perhaps the most striking finding, as noted above, is that a majority (54%) of the 12-year-olds who reported sexual contacts with an adult described it as a positive experience.

This finding, being potentially embarrassing to the child abuse industry (which thrives on generating and elaborating victim narratives rather than discovering reasons to be cheerful) was not headlined in the report. Instead, it emerged in an emailed response to questions presented by an independent researcher to Monica Fagerlund, lead author of the Finnish Child Victim Survey itself. The email was sent back in 2016, long before the very recent appearance of the Lahtinen et al. paper. The independent researcher was none other than Filip Schuster, who will be known to many here for his extremely well-informed comments at Heretic TOC.

However, Lahtinen et al.’s published paper contains further data of an inconvenient nature for the victimological view, as will be clear to the savvy reader despite the authors’ attempts to talk the implications down, through caveat and spin.

The analyses focused on the subsample of 256 children and adolescents who reported having sexual experiences with adults or with someone at least ﬁve years older at the time of the incident. This subsample amounts to 2.4% of the total sample, a figure some might feel is very low, and indeed reassuringly so on a conventional view, given that a survey of children themselves would appear to be the most reliable method.

For the boys, the experience was often positive (71%), whereas for the girls it was less often so evaluated (26%). Almost half of the girls (46%) said the experience was negative, compared to 9% of the boys. These findings were much the same for the sixth and ninth graders.

The most popular reason for not disclosing the contact to an adult was considering the experience not serious enough (41%). Other options included: “I did not believe that anyone would be interested” (14%); “I did not believe that disclosing would help me” (14%); miscellaneous other reasons (8%) included “I did not want to”, “There was nothing to tell”, and “I enjoyed it”. More negative reasons accounted for barely a quarter of the total: “I did not have the courage to tell” (14%); “I was too ashamed to disclose” (10%).

The authors commented in the paper:

The small number of answers to the question of whether a sexual incident with an adult was considered negative or positive does not enable testing statistical significance…. Most of the children reported these incidents as positive. This highlights the potentially contradictory views of an incident from the perspective of the respondent compared to that of society and the law.

I posted on Sexnet about the paper, asking specifically for members’ expert opinion on this statistical point. The size of the subsample (n = 256) is indeed small compared to the overall sample (n = 11,364) but to the layman the absolute number looks easily large enough to derive valid inferences in which considerable confidence can be placed.

Having mentioned the authors’ caveat on statistical significance, I should perhaps add a word about their spin. In fairness this is pretty much confined to two sentences in the “Conclusions and implications” section:

These results, taken together with the finding that many of the children did not label their experiences as sexual abuse, indicate that more age-appropriate safety education for children and adolescents is needed to encourage disclosures to adults early enough… Early disclosure is crucial, both for ending the abuse and for preventing perpetrators from moving on to new victims.

Again, I posted on Sexnet about this, writing:

So blinkered has research become that the policy point here (more safety education needed) will probably seem utterly uncontroversial to most people working in the field. That is because, for them, the victimological paradigm has become incontrovertible common sense. But this is zombie science. It lacks an alert appreciation of the data before the authors’ eyes, which clearly indicate that a very significant (in lay terms at least) proportion of the “victims” are only thus designated by convention, not by the evidence. This is not to argue against the goal of reducing real victimisation. It is just to suggest that a bigger and very important picture is being missed.

I am pleased to report that Mike Bailey, psychology professor at Northwestern University, and Sexnet moderator, supported my interpretation of the stats, posting to say “You are correct that size of the sub sample with ‘CSA’ is adequate for statistical tests.” He also said the study was “unusually informative”, thanking me for posting about it and kindly saying “Your take on this study is trenchant and brave”.

This was too good to last, sadly. Before you could say “knee-jerk reaction” my long-time adversary James Cantor had piped up, making a complete snowflake of himself (or of his colleagues) by asserting that my criticism of the CSA industry was offensive and would deter discussion of the paper – as though the 300-plus researchers and clinicians on Sexnet would be scared to challenge me. Yes, that’s me, little me, the sole surviving, vocal, non-virtuous paedo perv on the forum, faced with the massed ranks of the abuse industry’s intellectual elite, including leading lights within the Association for the Treatment of Sexual Abusers (ATSA)!

But at least Dr Cantor admitted that he agreed “with the basic conclusion of the posted article”, which is something. As is the fact that Dr Bailey was prompted to post again, saying my reference to the CSA industry “raises an issue I’ve been meaning to write about for a while”.

And write he did, at considerable length, in a remarkable post admitting that “in the culture at large, we are biased in a way that exaggerates the harmfulness of child-adult sex, often in a hysterical way”. He proceeded to write his own four-paragraph critique of the CSA industry, saying, for instance, government funding for research on CSA “is extraordinarily biased towards searching for harm” rather than positive experience. Nor were there grants to study why there might be positive experiences, including the possibility that iatrogenic harm is avoided when children and their adult partners manage to avoid law enforcement in their relationship, with its crushing impact on the younger partner as well as the older one.

Bailey’s contribution was wonderful but there were also a couple of tough queries arising from the detailed stats that put the validity of the findings in some doubt. Follow-up emails by Filip to Monica Fagerlund and Hanna-Mari Lahtinen elicited some further information but not enough to settle the key issues. Hanna even sent me a friendly email out of the blue, saying that in order to get good answers to the questions being raised she would need “qualitative data such as written answers to open questions. Unfortunately we did not have such questions concerning sexual abuse in this questionnaire…”

Yes, unfortunate but understandable. There is only so much that can be packed into a single survey.

Not to worry, though, for I soon discovered that the Finnish Findings are strongly supported by the Danish Data! Yes, in this rapidly unfolding Scandinavian thriller series (a Netflix box-set can’t be far off) another study has turned up in the nick of time!

Like the Lahtinen et al., paper, this Danish one was based on a rare survey – vanishingly rare in the US and UK at least – of school students rather than adults. The article, by Karin Helweg-Larsen and Helmer Bøving Larsen, came out in 2006 and appears to have been somewhat overlooked – certainly by me, perhaps on account of its miserablist title: “The prevalence of unwanted and unlawful sexual experiences reported by Danish adolescents: Results from a national youth survey in 2002”.

On close inspection, though, which required a few calculations of my own, it looks very hard to justify any claim that the survey was entirely or even mostly about unwanted sex. Rather, it was about illegal sex below the age of consent, set at 15 in Denmark. The participants in the survey were 9th grade students, nearly all of whom were themselves aged 15. Unlike the youngsters in Finland, they were not asked whether they felt the experience had been positive or negative but they were asked whether they felt it had been abusive or not. Thus the experience may or may not have been perceived as enjoyable and beneficial but it seems reasonable to infer that those who did not feel it was abusive probably thought they had consented to what happened, in fact if not in law.

So how many of these apparently consensual encounters were there? The authors wrote:

“A total of 7.5% of girls and 2% of boys reported CSA where the older person was at least five years older than the child, but less than half of the respondents perceived these experiences as sexual abuse.”

The relevant data were to be found in Table II, albeit without the percentages I was looking for. After working these out, is became clear that fully 60% of the respondents (boys 65% and girls – of whom there were far more – 59%) did not consider they had been abused.

What all this amounts to is extraordinarily good news. The Danish survey strongly supports the Finnish one in allowing us to conclude that when children are allowed to give their own perception of their sexual experiences with much older people, usually adults, a high proportion of them in effect say they consented to what happened and look back on it as something good in their life.

The CSA industry does its best to hide these encouraging facts even as it unwittingly discloses them via surveys aimed at discovering an endless parade of victims for society to be anxious and miserable about. Instead of joyful stories of companionable intimacy, everything has to be turned into bleak Nordic noir. We must not let them get away with it!

You can infer what Eunice felt from the fact the marriage took place. It was also a long-term relationship, which lasted until death of her husband.

As for the criticism of marriage, marriage need not be ideal for it to be much better than alternatives, such as forced celibacy or prison.

I think it’s unfair to point to feminism and say “They did it.”

Why? Even assuming anti-pedophilia or lack of rights for children is caused by several factors, they need not be equal in magnitude. Based on the historical record, I consider feminism a major factor, and I’d be skeptical of a model discounting changes in the age of consent, or even the possibility to consent, as if they were insignificant.

In so far as models go, I’ve seen other models, placing the blame mainly on Judeo-Christian religion, which would not even account for the more recent changes regarding anti-pedophilia or the rights of children. Yet, I haven’t seen religious MAPs balk at the idea of religion being a factor in anti-pedophilia, and they have certainly not launched into a defense of religion because of it, analogous to the reaction of MAPs, claiming to be feminists.

As for feminism as inspiration for youth liberation – what kind of liberation would that be? Even if we grant that females were considered property at some time in the past, the feminist solution was to draw an arbitrary line and proclaim it “bad” for some females (some women) to be property, while it was perfectly fine if other females (girls) lost what few rights they may have had.

I find it interesting how your last questions seems to presume that, without winning, anything could be pointless. Not implying or assuming that you think this, but that’d be a very sad, narrow-minded worldview to have. To think it’s all about winning…

Any battle worth fighting so strongly for is worth winning, IMO. And though many of us expect to lose a large number of battles for a while, ultimately we do hope to win the war itself.

Democratic systems do have a different mechanism in place to suppress speech as you noted, but SJWs are not exactly receiving the worst of it, if any, nor are they routinely fired from their jobs or forced to apologize to the public for espousing and even proudly proclaiming blatant misandry. This is certainly not the case whenever misogyny is expressed, particularly if it’s a man that does it. Are you aware that several publishing companies will not take any stories that include rape of women, no matter the context? Yet, you see male rape portrayed in fiction as something to get laughs from the audience.

Further, SJWs routinely do more censoring than they receive. Honestly, how many of them have had their Twitter or Facebook accounts taken down compared to how many accounts the have “flagged” into oblivion? such accounts belonging to others that they got shut down? This makes clear how much power the SJWs have obtained by milking their status as formerly oppressed groups to elicit pity and rationalize bitterness and hatred.

Yes, what I said can be said about all groups, but over two decades, the SJWs have been getting more laws passed in their favor than egalitarians. Finally, you do indeed often see men speaking about abortion, but I see no evidence that women are forcefully kept off the subject.

Patrick Condell (born 23 November 1949) is a writer, polemicist, and former stand-up comedian. In his early career he wrote and performed in alternative comedy shows during the 1980s and 1990s in London, winning the Time Out Comedy Award in 1991. He was also formerly a regular panelist on BBC Radio 1’s Loose Talk programme.

He speaks well on this videos, I always look out for them on liveleak. As you have already experienced in the past Tom, last week I was barred from facebook for having a ‘pro consent’ opinion regarding intergen relationships. I was very polite and forth right in my opinions, and did not react to all of the threats of violence, verbal abuse and general incoherent detritus thrown my way. Yet, I was the one to have my page disabled.

Unfortunately, Ed, the policy of Facebook seems to be the same as that of Twitter and YouTube regarding the issue of complaints: if someone complains (i.e., “flags”) your account, the complainant’s claim is favored, and down it goes. Also, no matter how polite you are and despite not breaking any laws, if your stance/subject matter offends enough people, then those administrations can take it down for being “inappropriate,” which can mean just about anything.

Not withstanding recent comments here on scientific research into paedophilia, and the biasing of public discussion toward or away from a reasoned and empirical basis …

I’m uncomfortable with the way censorship of mainstream social media has forced discussion of minor attraction into sharing screen time with alt right and jihadist propaganda.

Yes Pat Condell has some trenchant comments and his delivery is compelling, but throwing around terms like ‘social justice warrior’ and ‘feminist’ as grenades in a culture war is a polarizing tactic that only serves extremists.

I have friends who could be described as SJWs, but guess whose cause they’ve supported lately? Mine.

What I think the problem you mentioned boils down to, Sean, is how one happens to define the terms that are being thrown around. Some words have always been viewed as having a specific consensus definition, whereas others have been much more loosely defined, often depending upon who is using it at what time, and why (“pedophilia” being one good example; “socialism” being another).

The term “social justice warrior” is not pejorative if used to described someone who is actually supporting justice and equality. However, over the past few years it has been used to describe another group in ironic fashion: the “SJWs” denounced around here & elsewhere only operate under the guise of supporting actual social justice. In reality, however, their agenda is based upon anything but securing equality for all, i.e., egalitarianism. Their actual agenda is centered around revenge against anyone who is white, male, cis-gendered heterosexual. They rationalize this revenge for past oppression by making the outrageous contention that minority groups systematically oppressed in America (or elsewhere in the West) remain almost as systematically oppressed as they ever were, to the point that forceful, in-your-face strongarm political tactics are required… which, more ironically, they would be unable to carry out in the rude, divisive, and accusatory ways they have made their trademark if the civil rights movement was truly in its early stages. They are seeking power by playing the perpetual victim card and demanding entitlements in terms of behavior and power as reparation.

Since I am one who is actually concerned with securing equal rights for everyone, I prefer the term egalitarian rather than “social justice warrior,” based on the ironic manner the latter has come to be used in recent years. Egalitarians are loathed by the SJWs, I should note.

As for “feminist,” again, it depends on how you are defining that word. The type of feminism that espoused equality and empowerment for women during the era when they were truly seriously oppressed was laudable, and bears scant resemblance to the “SJW” phenomenon that has, unfortunately, latched onto feminism, socialism, progressivism, and liberalism in order to insinuate itself into the mainstream Left when it’s actually very much reactionary in nature, not progressive. It’s just the flip side to the type of reactionary politics represented by the traditional right-wing social conservatives.

One of the negative effects on society resulting from the “SJW” movement is the besmirching of feminism, socialism, and the Left in general, which isn’t helped by too many members of the Left either supporting it or simply declining to identify it and speak out against it for fear of either alienating certain people in their political circles or incurring the angry wrath that SJWs are notorious for. You said you have friends who would be considered “SJW” but support you as a MAP. Those who know you personally may do so, but the SJWs in general certainly do not support MAPs as a whole, nor they do support youth liberation. I happen to have some right-wing friends who are cool with me for being a MAP, but certainly do not support our community as a whole.

That all said, I fully agree that there is another tendency in opposing the SJWs that seems to assume if you are against the SJW nonsense, that requires you to be alt-right in your thinking. Part of the reason for this, I think, is what I mentioned up above: too many true progressives are hesitant or afraid to call the SJWs out on their nonsense, thus allowing the alt-rightists to do the bulk of the opposition against them and create the illusion opposing SJW-style reactionary thought requires you to be a right-winger.

I haven’t thought about it much so I’ve posted here in hope to be enlightened by others who might have.

“What brought you to Heretic TOC anyway?”

I’ve known about this blog for some years and I find it often to be very interesting.

“A case of getting disillusioned decades ago with the research route to credibility, perhaps?”

When I look at recent research it’s better, yes. But better in relation to what? Janssen, Jahnke, Walker, Cash, Freimond… call me ungrateful but they don’t convince me any bit more than Rind, Sandfort or Brongersma. It’s not so much about credibility as it is about how all those studies have done little to bring any actual change.

“I am rather heavily invested in this area so dissing it is very much treading on my blue suede shoes.”

My apologies for invading your safe space comfort zone.

“otherwise it becomes hard to explain why this blog, which is consistently research-oriented, attracts quite a lot of attention, including yours.”

I wonder why it attracts so much attention, though. Don’t get me wrong, it’s of excellent quality and that definitely plays an important role. But I’d also say there’s an obsession about research among MAPs and that this obsession exists because Cantor, his colleagues, and their predecessors all the way back to Krafft-Ebbing have succeeded in making us play their game and thus being forced to accept certain rules along which we have to argue, rules that have been designed to prevent any significant progress.

A game so seductive that the mighty pedo-activist TOC is so happy about a vaguely supportive comment of a researcher in a private listserv called sexnet that he talks about it with his fellow outcasts on his cute blog. It’s not my intention to mock or insult you, you’ve done more for MAPs than maybe anybody else, certainly more than me, the annoying anonymous commentator.

What I mean is that we all impose limits on our activism and sometimes those limits turn out to be unnecessary. Call me naive, you may very well be right about that, but I think when one of our most famous activists is now as humble as being enthusiastic that Cantor got upset about one of his posts on some private listserv, it’s time to ask how we got here and how we change that. How we make ourselves more independent from the opinion of some elitist researchers could be a good question to start with.

“General comment and reasoning, by contrast, while readers do benefit from engaging in it, does tend to just go round and round in circles.”

And why is this the case? Perhaps because research isn’t the one and only answer and shifting the focus could create much more diverse discussions.

“but forgive me if I don’t leap in the air and hail the new messiah”

Oh, I certainly don’t have all the answers, or any answers for that matter. And I don’t think it’d necessarily be a good sign if I would have. To get answers you have to start realizing that you don’t have them. But that is exactly what I feel many MAPs don’t do – they believe that science were the answer. I’m saying it’s not and if I receive flak for being that annoying person who complains but doesn’t have any clear alternatives I’m fine with that. But perhaps I spark some interesting conversations along the way. So no, sorry to disappoint but I’m not the messiah with the new fancy radical solution, just someone being at least as clueless as anybody else here is.

I’m sure to be on sexnet can be useful and not everyone should suddenly shift the focus to something other than research or even ignore research entirely. But the fact that at least I myself struggle to get more specific about alternatives to the current science-focus doesn’t scare me away but makes rather even more invested to find answers. Because I think there are answers, just that they might sometimes be hard to find.

I disagree with the impression many here seem to have that the feminist movement would have been very successful or influencial or that it wouldn’t value science. But let’s for the sake of the argument presume that’s correct. Then I wonder why MAPs shouldn’t follow this approach and abandon science a bit in favor of other tactics. Has any social movement in history made considerable progress because of science?

Tell me I’m ignorant and completely missing the point and bigger picture or that I should read more Frits Bernard or whoever but I fail to see how science will “save” us.

[TOC adds: I find this is really interesting and want to say so immediately. Aim to give reply later today but no time right now.]

I understand exactly where you’re coming from Arthur, but as a scientist and a minor attracted person myself, I also understand the motivation to plumb mysteries. It’s the grown up equivalent of playing doctor.

If you’re looking for somewhere to put all this ‘research’, I believe Michel Foucault would shelve it under ‘incitement to discourse’. See his “History of Sexuality, Volume 1”

>[On Rind, Sandfort, Brongersma and more recent studies]… Call me ungrateful but they don’t convince me… It’s not so much about credibility as it is about how all those studies have done little to bring any actual change.

Such studies had a huge impact at one time, or rather Brongersma’s and Bernard’s work did; but it has been reversed, overwhelmed by the impact of the gender revolution with its emphasis on equality in interpersonal relations.

In the 1970s and 80s Brongersma’s scholarship, as well as activism, along with that of Frits Bernard (scientific research in psychology), had a major, practical impact on Dutch society. For a while, the age of consent was in effect reduced to 12. Churches, teachers’ organisations and even judges were beginning to see intimate relations between children and adults in a more positive light, and this was feeding through into policy. See, “Damn fine judges in Amsterdam”:https://tomocarroll.wordpress.com/2015/02/09/damn-fine-judges-in-amsterdam/

So studies such as Brongersma’s and the rest absolutely do have the potential to generate a really potent effect in the right circumstances. What we do about today’s circumstances is another matter.

Arthur Dent feels the kind community’s enthusiasm for research is a mistake, as it plays by the enemy’s rules. Unfortunately, they are the only rules, just as the laws of nature cannot be wished away. Research is a study of how things actually are in society and the world around us. It is about facts, not arguments or ideology. That is why people read Heretic TOC blogs far more than many other blogs that fail to give much, or any, well-researched information: it is because people want to know stuff.

Arthur chastises me for being, in effect, a star-struck groupie of the “elitist researchers” on Sexnet, and asks how we can be more independent of them and their good opinion. It is a good question, to which I do not immediately have an answer. Does anyone else here?

In the meantime, though, I am more than confident that having a seat at the table of this elite helps enormously. Even if they are to be regarded solely as the enemy (but this is far too jaundiced a view), it is a place for finding out a heck of a lot about what they are up to. It is a dream hang-out for intellectual espionage!

As for being star-struck, or however you might choose to put it, I would protest that I am there, mainly, out of sheer intellectual curiosity and the thrill of what certainly feels like a high-stakes battle when I find myself going mano a mano in scholarly disputation. If I am playing their game, well, forgive me, but it is a game I thoroughly enjoy. Sorry others can’t all share in this fun directly, which may piss some people off, but there is nothing to stop anyone applying. Sure beats languishing in jail, anyways, as has been my fate on other occasions, or having no one better to debate with than some ignorant, bigoted probation officer or SO treatment programme leader.

There’s a saying, “ask two Jews, you’ll get three opinions.” I am Jewish and so will commandeer two of those three opinions. I find justification in both what Tom and Arthur say. There is no single path to what most of us on this blog want to achieve.

One thing to understand, my newest friend, is that progress takes time. The human lifespan is short, so we tend to weigh time against that life span, thereby considering a few decades to be a massive span of time. It certainly may be to us as individuals, but in regards to human civilization as a whole, it’s but a handful of water in an ocean. As a result, we naturally tend to be impatient and want to see significant change in our lifetimes, or at least while we still have some youth left to enjoy it. If we don’t, then we tend to feel that it’s utterly hopeless, and that significant change will “never” come. But the majority of human beings will not actually be lucky enough to live during a time when the culmination of their activism comes to fruition due to how long it takes for social progress to occur vs. the short length of our individual life spans. This will inevitably cloud our perceptions.

We also must keep in mind that all social movements are apt to experience setbacks and backlashes that will temporarily knock them back six steps after they manage to take three steps ahead (as happened when the late ’60s and ’70s came, only to have that progress kicked back when the ’80s followed). Such is not unusual at all in the history of human social progress.

As for science being beneficial or not, I can say it does mean something, because it shows us three things: 1. The facts are basically on our side; 2. The situation of MAPs and youths are not utterly unique in human history, as the naysayers towards activists seem to think; 3. Non-MAPs are capable of changing their emotion-fueled views on such volatile topics over time.

Both posts are written not by Amos himself, but by Hikari from Hikari’s blog (look at Tom’s blogroll), as Amos himself honestly states in the beginning of both posts. He has just re-published them, probably to draw more well-deserved attention to her excellent works (he and his blog are much more famous and notable than Hikari and her blog)…

And this is my response to Sean down below, since that thread was getting spaghetti-fied too.

Thank you, Sean, and I do not mind you speaking up. As I have said before, and is clearly evident by those who have responded favorably to my overly long posts, whether long posts are good or bad is subjective, and not everyone agrees. We all differ in terms of preference to style as much as genre when it comes to reading, and finding the perfect balance can be difficult. I try to be succinct here because I know it’s a trying experience for our single moderator, though as I suggested to him, I hope to create a place for longer posts. There are also psychological factors in place that affect length; I have found that if a long essay is divided into different sections, like books are into chapters, readers no longer feel that odd necessity to complete the essay all in one sitting and thus that “rushed” feel you mentioned.

Yes, I can be irritating in the extreme with my passionate display of opinionated views, but if I never irritated anyone, I wouldn’t be a very good social activist, amirite? 😛 Being universally pleasant is just not what an activist does lol!

As for the problem of ambiguity that you mention, I do believe there are many cases regarding civil rights that apply more or less equally to children and postpubescents/young adolescents when it comes to youth liberation. That is why I use the word “youth” in a blanket fashion, just as I do the term “underagers.” However, I have often differentiated between children and adolescents when it comes to things like what type of sexual activities would be biologically safe; I have always believed that children’s sexual desires are less intense than that of adolescents and adults, and that mutually consensual interactions with them should be limited to what is best called “sex play,” not intercourse. In fact, I have often done my best to try to avoid using terms like “sex” when discussing intergen relations, because that term is ambiguous and too often brings to mind specifically intercourse and the full array of kinky sexual activities adults often desire and engage in. This is why I prefer terms like “sex play” and “sexual contact” over “sex” when discussing intergen liaisons, so I have striven to avoid ambiguity when possible in this manner. When it comes to civil rights, however, then yes, I do tend to go with more all-encompassing terms, much as “MAP” or “Kind” are blanket terms for pedophiles, hebephiles, and nepiophiles.

Hi Dissident, yes I think the confusion is purely semantic. I tend to think of ‘youth’ denoting adolescence but, after casting about for an alternative, I’ve struggled to come up with anything better.

I’ve tended to use the biological definitions in my own thinking, ie: infant, juvenile, adolescent, adult. These have relatively precise definitions. There’s also the term ‘pre-adult’ but this has shifting meanings as well.

I’d be interested to hear other suggestions from the floor. Youngster? Man cub?

This is a response to my new good friend Arthur Dent, which was growing too thin down below.

“Maybe you should listen to what the egalitarians have to say”

Nope. I mean, you said yourself that I’m full of hate so why do you think I could be reasoned with?

Hatred is a state of mind that people can get past. Not only individuals, but entire groups of people. Social progress of any sort could not occur if people weren’t as capable of getting past hatred as they were of adopting it.

But jokes aside, if you think that feminists like me are brainwashed and evil then why do you waste your time arguing?

I do not think most of you are evil. (I do not, however, consider the SJW movement to be feminism at all, since it’s not striving for equality in terms of power balance in society, but rather for a mere coup d’état of that imbalance, and has thus tossed aside the moral high ground that traditional feminism had).

I think your ilk is generally misguided into bitterness about past offenses that have been largely rectified, yet you refuse to forgive for; and which you also insist on taking out on the descendants of those who may have been real oppressors. And also guilty of willful ignorance that causes you to blind yourselves to important facets of history, such as the many white male heterosexuals who participated in all civil rights struggles for minorities, including the many who risked life and limb as abolitionists during the Civil War to free escaped slaves. And which blinds you into ignoring the complicity of great civilizations run by people of color, such as ancient Egypt and the more recent Moor empire, that were heavily invested in chattel slavery (including a good number of European slaves in the latter’s case). And the growing number of female politicians who have always proven they display no greater sense of decency or value for human life once they acquire power & privilege over others than their male counterparts.

Isn’t that giving us that exactly what we want, namely attention?

Refutation of those who make incorrect statements about history, people, and justice is important. And many social activists dislike bullies, and this is precisely how SJWs behave on a regular basis. I’m not calling you a bully, but I’ve had more than enough SJWs scream in my face and call me ever expletive you can imagine, and likely a few they invented on the spot.

When two people have very different political views, like you and me seem to have, then from my experience there’s no use in arguing.

On a personal level, you’re correct. Hence, I try to avoid having these types of arguments with friends and people I work with professionally (which include a good number of right-wingers, atheists, and fundie Christians). However, here we are on an open political field. We are discussing ideas, which has always resulted in debate. I do not think the refutation of ideas that I believe need to be incorrect is a waste of time in a broader political sense, because it does have an important effect on those who are on the fence about the issues, or for points to bolster their own debate arsenal.

If you make statements that others disagree with on an open political field, you need to expect to be challenged. If we were hanging out at a bar or working together on some professional project, then I have little doubt we could get along and I would strive to avoid broaching these political topics in that particular environment.

Especially online without body language and actual voice it’s highly unlikely to convince anybody who shares a completely other set of values.

That is arguably true. But again, I’m less interested in convincing you personally than I am with providing what I consider to be good refutation points and important thoughts to consider on an open discussion field for people who may be on the fence about the issues.

<b?That’s why I made one response to state my perspective on the issue. After seeing your answer and that you most definitely don’t have similar worldviews I thought a little bit of self-irony on my side (describing myself as an “PC SJW fluid” as a homage to your neologism) would be a reconciling end to the conversation.

Well, that particular tactic didn’t work, but I do sincerely appreciate your conciliatory gesture now that it has been made clear to me. We may not be destined to disagree on everything, but again, note that this is an open discussion field, and just as you had the right to openly disagree with me, the reverse also stands.

I’m sorry that this self-irony obviously wasn’t as obvious as I hoped it would be.

It’s okay, man. I can be dense like that sometimes 😛

Well, I guess they’re teaching cultural marxism instead of humor these days at my safe space college in Cuckistan.

Worry not, I’m not bereft of humor! I just may not always be quick to pick up someone else’s attempt at it, due to (as you said) the lack of body language and tone of voice.

And it’s perfectly fine to step out of that safe space and discuss what you want to here, as long as it’s done with at least a modicum of respect, which I believe you have proven yourself more than capable of. I try to disagree as respectfully as possible. I can be very opinionated, intensely passionate for my views, and quite a tool if someone actually manages to piss me off, but I don’t think I’m that overly temperamental or discourteous

This is a response to my new good friend Arthur Dent, which was growing too thin down below.

“Maybe you should listen to what the egalitarians have to say”

Nope. I mean, you said yourself that I’m full of hate so why do you think I could be reasoned with?

Hatred is a state of mind that people can get past. Not only individuals, but entire groups of people. Social progress of any sort could not occur if people weren’t as capable of getting past hatred as they were of adopting it.

But jokes aside, if you think that feminists like me are brainwashed and evil then why do you waste your time arguing?

I do not think most of you are evil. (I do not, however, consider the SJW movement to be feminism at all, since it’s not striving for equality in terms of power balance in society, but rather for a mere coup d’état of that imbalance, and has thus tossed aside the moral high ground that traditional feminism had).

I think your ilk is generally misguided into bitterness about past offenses that have been largely rectified, yet you refuse to forgive for; and which you also insist on taking out on the descendants of those who may have been real oppressors. And also guilty of willful ignorance that causes you to blind yourselves to important facets of history, such as the many white male heterosexuals who participated in all civil rights struggles for minorities, including the many who risked life and limb as abolitionists during the Civil War to free escaped slaves. And which blinds you into ignoring the complicity of great civilizations run by people of color, such as ancient Egypt and the more recent Moor empire, that were heavily invested in chattel slavery (including a good number of European slaves in the latter’s case). And the growing number of female politicians who have always proven they display no greater sense of decency or value for human life once they acquire power & privilege over others than their male counterparts.

Isn’t that giving us that exactly what we want, namely attention?

Refutation of those who make incorrect statements about history, people, and justice is important. And many social activists dislike bullies, and this is precisely how SJWs behave on a regular basis. I’m not calling you a bully, but I’ve had more than enough SJWs scream in my face and call me ever expletive you can imagine, and likely a few they invented on the spot.

When two people have very different political views, like you and me seem to have, then from my experience there’s no use in arguing.

On a personal level, you’re correct. Hence, I try to avoid having these types of arguments with friends and people I work with professionally (which include a good number of right-wingers, atheists, and fundie Christians). However, here we are on an open political field. We are discussing ideas, which has always resulted in debate. I do not think the refutation of ideas that I believe need to be incorrect is a waste of time in a broader political sense, because it does have an important effect on those who are on the fence about the issues, or for points to bolster their own debate arsenal.

If you make statements that others disagree with on an open political field, you need to expect to be challenged. If we were hanging out at a bar or working together on some professional project, then I have little doubt we could get along and I would strive to avoid broaching these political topics in that particular environment.

Especially online without body language and actual voice it’s highly unlikely to convince anybody who shares a completely other set of values.

That is arguably true. But again, I’m less interested in convincing you personally than I am with providing what I consider to be good refutation points and important thoughts to consider on an open discussion field for people who may be on the fence about the issues.

That’s why I made one response to state my perspective on the issue. After seeing your answer and that you most definitely don’t have similar worldviews I thought a little bit of self-irony on my side (describing myself as an “PC SJW fluid” as a homage to your neologism) would be a reconciling end to the conversation.

Well, that particular tactic didn’t work, but I do sincerely appreciate your conciliatory gesture now that it has been made clear to me. We may not be destined to disagree on everything, but again, note that this is an open discussion field, and just as you had the right to openly disagree with me, the reverse also stands.

I’m sorry that this self-irony obviously wasn’t as obvious as I hoped it would be.

It’s okay, man. I can be dense like that sometimes 😛

Well, I guess they’re teaching cultural marxism instead of humor these days at my safe space college in Cuckistan.

Worry not, I’m not bereft of humor! I just may not always be quick to pick up someone else’s attempt at it, due to (as you said) the lack of body language and tone of voice.

And it’s perfectly fine to step out of that safe space and discuss what you want to here, as long as it’s done with at least a modicum of respect, which I believe you have proven yourself more than capable of. I try to disagree as respectfully as possible. I can be very opinionated, intensely passionate for my views, and quite a tool if someone actually manages to piss me off, but I don’t think I’m that overly temperamental or discourteous.

Well, sometimes one wants to say something important in a particular stage of discussion, before the dialogue moves forward. This was the reason I occasionally have to put the errata for some of my posts: only after a quickly-made text is posted, I note the misprints and errors…

P.S. For Dissident personally: welcome back, Dissy! 🙂 I was missing you and your long and rich comments…

Thank you for the warm welcome back, Explorer. And thank you for being another who makes it clear that the dislike for long posts is not universal (Eeyore expressed the same thing to me on GC a few days ago), so those who prefer concise responses seem to think. Alas, long posts are murder for Tom as the sole moderator, so in the future out of consideration for both him and all the time and hard work I put into them, I’m going to do this: If I want to make a reply that I see is going to be overly long, I’ll post it over on GC and leave a link to it here. I’m sure many over there would like to see what I have to say also, and Tom could choose to read it without having to mod it, and he can still allow responses/discussion for it here as well.

Well, I hope you didn’t think that everyone you respect will automatically have the same aesthetic preferences as yourself when it comes to essays, Tom 😛 I wasn’t telling any tall tales when I said that stylistic preferences over things like length depends on the individual reader, and whether this makes the essay/post “good” or bad” is in the eye of the individual beholder.

This is a response to Peace down below, as the responses in that thread are now getting very spaghetti-fied.

So, I’ve noticed this tendency within the Kind community to become upset when anybody speaks about the harm they felt when engaged in an intergen relationship as a youth. The author didn’t say that public policy should be changed; they are simply relaying how their own experience, which they considered abuse, is reminiscent of scenes within the movie. Even though I don’t agree with the author’s conclusions (especially about the movie), wouldn’t you say that their disapproval of intergen relations based off of their own experiences is similar to many people’s approval of intergen relationships based off of their own experiences? Basically, do many in the Kind community only accept a person’s lived experience and emotions – and the conclusions drawn from them – concerning intergen relationships if those experiences were positive?

I won’t say your concerns aren’t valid ones, Peace. We should indeed be mindful of making the same mistake society so often does with people who say an intergen contact was positive, albeit in the opposite direction. But here is what I think should be considered.

The two types of statements are not given equal weight or consideration by society at large. By a longshot. It takes far more courage for a person in today’s world to report such an intergen sexual experience as positive than to say the opposite. If the person reporting the former it is still a youth, they risk losing what little freedom they are allowed in addition to being slapped down in many other ways by their adult “guardians,” including being forced into therapy to “correct” what clearly must be some form of Stockholm Syndrome caused by the experience. In fact, the parents could get into trouble with Child Protective Services if they fail to come down on their kids for making such a revelation. If they are an adult when they report a positive experience they had with an adult when they were kids, well… remember what happened to Milo Yanopoulos not too long ago? Need I say more? I will anyway: at the very least, they can expect to mercilessly attacked on all quarters on Twitter and elsewhere in social media, to the point where even some of the bravest and outspoken souls out there can quickly be beaten into recanting and apologizing for their convention-violating statement. And that still wont save them from losing their jobs!

On the other hand, those at any age who report the opposite in relation to such a childhood experience tend to be thoroughly rewarded for it, often without the validity of what they say being questioned or investigated in any way. In fact, calls for such investigations or questions asked would quickly get shot down as heartless and insensitive. The rewards one can expect for reporting an intergen experience as being negative can come in myriad forms, such as receiving a gratifying surfeit of attention, sympathy, and deference by the media and many other institutions that they can parlay into lucrative positions as public speakers, gain a vast amount of publicity by appearing on any number of talk shows to “get the message out” where they will be pampered like royalty (with the same consideration as one may give to a fragile crystal knickknack), and all too often given license to behave any way they please towards others lest those who critique them be considered heartless assholes who “just do not know what it’s like.” In fact, how many such victims have actually built media careers for themselves on the basis of being a Victim who never gets over the pain?

Now, in case you are going to say that those who report negative experiences with intergen sexual contact have reason to be ashamed to report it, or subject to shame, I must duly protest, because the evidence for such a frequent claim just does not present itself with even a fair degree of empirical scrutiny. I have very rarely seen anything like that happen, especially during the past few decades when the victimology industry became such a powerful political force. This is NOT to say that all such people are lying, because real abuse does happen. However, there is no way, I think, that you can effectively argue that there is currently anything remotely resembling equal treatment for the two opposite types of claims, or that those who report positive intergen experiences are routinely listened to; or that those who report negative intergen experiences are routinely shamed into silence. Rather, the polar opposite is most often the case by far.

This is why so many individuals in the Kind community likely react with suspicion when claims of a negative intergen sexual contact is made, as so few others will even consider questioning that side of the allegation fence, because the mainstream narrative is very adamant that negativity is the ONLY valid type of claim to be made.

This doesn’t mean that such suspicion is always right, because again, real abuse does happen. But considering the side that the general consensus is weighted in favor of, I do think it’s completely justified to ask for verification rather than just taking the claims at face value based on the belief that it’s rude or “unfair” to do otherwise. I think, again, the truth may be to the contrary.

I also think this further warrants judging the validity of a negative claim on the basis of both the source making it, and the context upon which that claim is made based upon all the knowledge we do have on the subject. For instance, is the person making the claim known for being a fantasist, chronic liar, known for constantly seeking attention & pity, or suffering from a serious mental illness or substance addiction that make them prone to delusions? Such people can indeed still be telling the truth when they make such an allegation, but if so, then should we not remind them and everyone else the important lesson implicit in “The Boy Who Cried Wolf”? Is it truly insensitive to at least question claims made by such people?

As another “for instance” to consider regarding context, the claim that the negative intergen experience occurred with an adult whom they lived with or at least had no choice but to spend a lot of time with and who had a large degree of authority over them is much more likely to be true given what we know, then, say, the claim that they were abused by an adult who had no power over them and lived ten blocks away but which they continued to visit over and over again; or one they could have avoided with relative ease if so inclined. Such allegations of negativity that occurred within the latter type of context frankly should invite a degree of scrutiny from the Kind community and any researcher who is familiar with the actual research. This doesn’t mean there actually wasn’t abuse going on in that type of context and that there was more to the matter than was at first evident, but it does demand investigation since it begs some good questions, and can quite likely turn out to have been an experience that was seen as wanted and positive at the time but was later re-conceptualized due to iatrogenic and/or sociogenic pressures.

Which brings me to my final point to consider, re: your concern that kids are readily under the control of adults, which is why they could conceivably agree to sexual activity they do not actually want with no complaint. Let’s seriously think about that claim for a moment. Kids are indeed under the control of adults, but they are also notorious for defying adult control at every opportunity. If they are forced to something, they often tend to still do it, true. But in the absence of actual force and coercion, again, I do not believe that unwanted sexual activity is the sole unwanted thing that kids will simply do if an adult asks them to. It just doesn’t make sense.

Also, and seriously, is it truly more likely for a single adult to manipulate a younger person to think they wanted an experience they really didn’t than it would be for a combination of adults and peers with great power and influence over a child or teen to re-conceptualize an experience they did enjoy into one they actually didn’t? Does one adult paramour seriously have that much more power and influence over a child’s mind than the numerous other adults in their live, including friends, doctors, parents, mass media voices, etc? Yes, it could happen, of course, but how likely is the first scenario when compared with the second? Yet, which scenario is society at large more concerned about? Or, rather, solely concerned about?

With all this noted, I will stay say that the essence of your concern is correct, Peace. I totally agree with you that simply eliminating the AoC laws while making little to no other changes in society could open up a huge keg of worms. In fact, I have gone on record for saying that I think there is a special place in Hell reserved for the small sub-category of pro-choicers who are not youth liberationists and only want the AoC laws changed, but little else. We need to respect younger people enough to award them full citizenship and rights, and that includes full access to information, freedom of speech, and a full degree of education so they can acquire all the knowledge and guidance they require to make the best decisions for themselves as individuals. That being said, though, I do think the AoC laws are destructive enough that they should at least be reformed in the meantime to look at every situation on a case-by-case basis so that any extant nuances can be considered rather than arbitrary sentences being meted out every time.

I guess what I’d like is a consideration of nuances. A youth who grew up in a sex-negative household is going to react differently than one who grew up in a sex-positive household. A girl who grew up hearing specific messages about her body, sex, and sexuality is going to react differently than one who is more free from gendered messages and expectations. These sorts of differences are important not just in intergen relationships but also ones between adults.

I think a youth’s upbringing and the messages they receive from adults is especially important. One thing I’ve noticed is that adults will tell kids to speak up, to say “no” when they don’t like something, to use their words – but will then turn around and, when a kid says “no, I don’t want to do that,” the adult will tell them too bad, they have to. Then the kids are trapped in a strange limbo where their words have no power despite adults’ insistence that they do. At the same time, maybe they aren’t taught to speak up about what they want because they’ve received messages of being “seen and not heard” or “you don’t always get what you want.”

My concern doesn’t lie as much with freely sought out relationships between adult and youth, but ones which are not free from the conscious or unconscious use of authority and power such as teachers and coaches. When pursued correctly, these relationships can be collaborative and consensual; however, care should be taken by the adult to make sure that lines aren’t crossed with concern to emotional coercion.

So basically, relationships aren’t black and white. Like I said in another post, the insistence that a kid was either abused and didn’t realize it or that they are actually lying to themselves when they personally feel abused are two sides of the same coin. We need people to speak up, and we need adults to not speak over the youth they want to help.

At the same time, maybe they aren’t taught to speak up about what they want because they’ve received messages of being “seen and not heard” or “you don’t always get what you want.”

My concern doesn’t lie as much with freely sought out relationships between adult and youth, but ones which are not free from the conscious or unconscious use of authority and power such as teachers and coaches. When pursued correctly, these relationships can be collaborative and consensual; however, care should be taken by the adult to make sure that lines aren’t crossed with concern to emotional coercion.

Part of the problem when evaluating that concern is the contention that if a kid is told to do something they truly do not want to do, like being emotionally coerced into having sex with an adult they do not actually want to be with, that the youth would not be resisting in passive fashion. I’m sorry, Peace, but I do not buy that. Any adult with half a brain should be able to tell when someone is not into something but only “going along with it” for any number of emotional reasons–including simply being afraid or reluctant to say “no” for whatever reason.

For instance, I have had young women of legal age pretend to have a romantic interest in me when they were actually after something else; or they had an interest but also had a boyfriend on the side they neglected to tell me about, and thus could not fully get past their feelings for him. In those instances, with me thinking they had a genuine romantic interest, I felt it was okay to make a move on them when we were alone together. Though not wanting to say “no” for fear of breaking the ruse (in the first type of case) or just being hit with sudden feelings of guilt for cheating on their real paramour (in the second type of case), they resisted passively by simply sitting there without responding to my advances in any way. So me, having half a brain, stopped the advances after a few seconds once it became clear they were not reciprocating and said something like, “You’re clearly not into this. I guess we need to talk, right?”

Some of them, to keep up the ruse, did indeed lie and say they just “weren’t ready yet” (by that, i’m talking about simply making out and petting, not full intercourse, which was never a big concern for me, and which I was always clear about). So, I said fine, but when six months had passed and they still weren’t “ready” to even so much as kiss, I’m sorry, but it’s clear they weren’t really into me romantically, and that a talk was indeed in order. Then, yes, the truth came out in not so many words, save for a few who were honest enough to put their extra-romantic agenda aside to apologize for the ruse. Those in the second case came clean about having a real boyfriend on the side, and that was all she wrote for that.

The point being: No, I do not believe a kid who is truly not interested in getting intimate with any adult who may be using some form of emotional coercion will show no sign whatsoever of not being into the advances. They will resist in passive ways, and both common sense and common decency should combine to let the guy (or woman) clearly see that this youth is not into it. People can easily be educated from an early age to make note of the signs of passive resistance, and that is assuming common sense is seriously not good enough on its own. If the adult continues on despite the evidence of passive resistance, then they are not a decent person, plain and simple, and they deserve to be charged and indicted for molestation.

Sorry, I do not believe there are a large swath of truly decent adults who are too simple-minded to pick up on the very obvious signs of passive resistance, or that they can routinely get “so caught up in the moment” that they ignore it for a lengthy period of time. I am speaking from personal experience, one I believe is shared by many (if not most) people of all ages. Ff you truly care about the feelings of the other person on the other end of your advances, and you want them to take as much pleasure from it as you, then no matter how horny you get, their passive resistance will kill the mood very quickly. That was certainly the case with me, because I wanted those young women to want my advances, not simply to sit there and let me do whatever I wanted in disregard of their own feelings. And I highly doubt the average decent person will routinely lack that type of control simply because they are very aroused; and of course assuming they are sober (alcohol & certain drugs is another problem that is too complicated to go into in detail here). Even if they feared saying “no” or openly resisting, the lack of passionate response would be as obvious as the Sun in the clear blue sky on a summer day.

I think while your concerns are valid, you are getting so overly concerned that despite your great brilliance (which I think is much greater than my own, btw), you are throwing common sense to the wind and willing to consider the worst in a great many types of situations that is disproportionate to the level required simply because one of the hypothetical participants is an adult and the other is an underager.

Like I said in another post, the insistence that a kid was either abused and didn’t realize it or that they are actually lying to themselves when they personally feel abused are two sides of the same coin. We need people to speak up, and we need adults to not speak over the youth they want to help.

Once again, my main disagreement with you here seems to be what appears to be your contention that claims of an intergen sexual encounter being negative carries equal weight with one that purports positive feelings. As I already explained above (please refer back to that), in our present day culture and media that is just not possible, and should not be expected. Making that expectation is pandering to overwrought moralizing concerns rather than concerns based on practicality and common sense.

This is not to say that allegations a given intergen encounter was negative should be dismissed out of hand. It means, plain and simple, a huge deal of empirical evidence going back a few decades makes it very clear that there is often coercion on the side of society and the media for someone to make the negativity claim, and this is more likely than the disproportionate degree of concern alleging that the adult they were involved with was the one doing the coercion. This more than justifies not going to the opposite extreme I think you are suggesting: take all such claims at face value without considering the reality of our culture and media, which includes the vast amount of pressure often put on youths to obey the herd of adults surrounding them. as opposed to just one. Simply believing them at face value may be more polite, one can argue, but it is too likely to be wrong in truth to just accept out of hand.

If we want justice to prevail for all concerned, then truth must always come before sentiment. And we must also consider truth much more important than “balance.”

Thank you and the rest who gave me support here, Peter 🙂 Not everyone likes posts of length, and I understand why they do not (especially not anyone who has to moderate them!), but not everyone dislikes them either, and I thank you for making this clear as well. In fact, as a writer, I have very rarely come across any one way of doing things that is universally liked or disliked. I still tried not to make them too long, which is why I did my best to limit the length of each point by point response I made to Arthur (as an example).

‘We need to respect younger people enough to award them full citizenship and rights, and that includes full access to information, freedom of speech, and a full degree of education so they can acquire all the knowledge and guidance they require to make the best decisions for themselves as individuals.’

“It takes far more courage for a person in today’s world to report such an intergen sexual experience as positive than to say the opposite.”

I don’t think that’s necessarily correct. A lot of people who talk about positive experiences do so naively, without any fear (e.g. Milo) and then wake up and face a lot of backlash. On the other hand people with negative experiences are still often accused of being liars who just want to ruin someone’s career. And even if they are believed it is usually way harder to talk about about something negative that has happened to you than about something positive because then you might be seen as a “victim” or “survivor” instead of a human being. If you’re e.g. male then being seen as a victim can be hurtful because it goes against the stereotype of male persons being strong. If you’re e.g. female then you’ve always had to deal with the stereotype of female persons being weak and so you could be afraid that talking about negative experiences you had might enforce these prejudices.

So without any research about this I think it’s not possible to make any generalized statements.

“remember what happened to Milo Yanopoulos not too long ago?”

Bill Maher and George Takei made similar, or even more controversial statements than Milo without losing their jobs or receiving a lot of backlash. The reason he got attacked much more than they is that he was already criticized by a lot of people for publicly outing trans people and various other unkind stuff. So his statements about intergenerational relationships were just the tip on the iceberg, at least in my view.

“often without the validity of what they say being questioned or investigated in any way.”

That’s another reason why it can be difficult for people to speak up. Because when they do then instead of them being supported, the person they accused gets chased by a lynch mob. Either that or no one believes them. Trump would be just one example of rape culture preventing people in power to face the consequences of their actions.

“Now, in case you are going to say that those who report negative experiences with intergen sexual contact have reason to be ashamed to report it, or subject to shame, I must duly protest, because the evidence for such a frequent claim just does not present itself with even a fair degree of empirical scrutiny.”

That a very strong claim I’d say. I think it’s not necessary to look at studies to find out if someone is or was ashamed and therefore found or has found it difficult to report something. It’s hardly a pleasant experience to tell someone else that one was e.g. raped. It’s similar with gay people being often silent about their experiences with prejudiced people or students not telling their parents they’re bullied in school. In this society everything is about being strong and independent and everything that goes against this narrative can be difficult to discuss and is potentially connected with a lot of shame.

“This is NOT to say that all such people are lying, because real abuse does happen.”

Most people are saying the truth. It’s comparatively seldom that someone lies about this.

“or that those who report negative intergen experiences are routinely shamed into silence.”

They are shamed into silence, although not as often as those who report positive exepriences. Especially when someone says that a person in their social environment raped them it’s hard for people to believe them because there’s the notion that “those things happen to other people but not to us” and that “only evil people do this but nobody I know personally”. So denial is unfortunately for many people the easiest way to prevent their family or social environment being completely destroyed because of this. Everything is fine and then suddenly someone comes along and tells you e.g. a friend or family member did something horrible – of course for many people this too hard to accept and they’ll shame the person who was so brave telling this to them.

“it’s completely justified to ask for verification rather than just taking the claims at face value based on the belief that it’s rude or “unfair” to do otherwise.”

The appropriate response to someone saying they were raped is to believe them. That doesn’t mean starting a lynch mob against the accused person because revenge doesn’t help anyone. Believing them means helping them and listening to what they say.

“Is it truly insensitive to at least question claims made by such people?”

That’s what the (in)justice system is for, not the public or any people who aren’t directly involved the situation. Anyone else who questions such claims won’t find out anything by doing so and only hurt others by perpetuating the notion that such statements wouldn’t usually be trustworthy and done because of jealosy or revenge when in reality they’re actually only very rarely incorrect. If one wants to prevent unfairly accused persons to lose their job then there’re many much better ways than to question the accusers. For example one could speak up against lynch mobs or anything else that goes against the principle innocent until proven guilty. To believe someone that something negative happened to them and that they’re sincere in telling their version of the story is after all not the same as saying the accused person is definitely guilty.

“It takes far more courage for a person in today’s world to report such an intergen sexual experience as positive than to say the opposite.”

I don’t think that’s necessarily correct. A lot of people who talk about positive experiences do so naively, without any fear (e.g. Milo) and then wake up and face a lot of backlash.

Yet, it cannot be denied that they should know better. And there is absolutely no pressure to make statements of positivity, and there is no denial that it comes with immense risks. Not so, the reverse. Both of which we have seen displayed over and over again.

On the other hand people with negative experiences are still often accused of being liars who just want to ruin someone’s career.

This didn’t start happening, though, until just recently, when it was revealed that the unbalanced level of PC in the media which made misandry fashionable was beginning to encourage many individuals to either lie for reasons of revenge, or re-interpret past experiences for reasons of regret. And those who make claims to negative intergen experiences will still get a massive amount of support from the #MeToo movement, who will not exactly be inclined to consider any degree of nuance, as they too often seem more concerned with promoting a message than getting at the truth. How much support will go into chastising individuals for making allegations of positive experiences, however? As I noted to Peace, the matter is anything but balanced.

And even if they are believed it is usually way harder to talk about about something negative that has happened to you than about something positive because then you might be seen as a “victim” or “survivor” instead of a human being.

I completely disagree that this is a problem for many people in the political climate that has prevailed since the Victimology movement gained so much political power and cultural traction, and mainstream liberals jumped on its bandwagon. People gain a lot of benefits from playing the “victim” and “survival” card, and it’s hardly considered undignified in the present media and cultural environment.

If you’re e.g. male then being seen as a victim can be hurtful because it goes against the stereotype of male persons being strong.

True, but if you happened to be a minor when said events occurred, then you can share a similar PC status to women in our culture.

If you’re e.g. female then you’ve always had to deal with the stereotype of female persons being weak and so you could be afraid that talking about negative experiences you had might enforce these prejudices.

Many, many women are not concerned about looking “weak,” because that plays into a narrative required to allow them to claim that men are more likely to take advantage, more likely to be evil, more likely to power-trip, etc. Those who promote the current “SJW” mentality want it both ways: They want women to have all the rights that men have (which is laudable), but none of the responsibilities that come with agency (which is not so much laudable). The same goes for minors, save for the fact that they are truly individuals who still systematically oppressed minorities.

So without any research about this I think it’s not possible to make any generalized statements.

I think the vast amount of empirical evidence speaks for itself, Alex. What you described is a set of assumptions that are part of the narrative, not part of that evidence.

“remember what happened to Milo Yanopoulos not too long ago?”

Bill Maher and George Takei made similar, or even more controversial statements than Milo without losing their jobs or receiving a lot of backlash.

Were they given a huge amount of support? Or were those statements simply largely overlooked? That is a question that was actually asked in the media after the Milo incident. The point is, you would be hard-pressed to find examples of individuals receiving widespread support for claims of positivity, yet plenty of support given to anyone who makes claims of negativity. Those who are accused of “attacking” individuals who make claims of negativity are generally people who are asking important questions about the situation, and they receive a huge amount of vilification in return. So, again, I do not agree for one second that the two types of claims in any way carry equal weight.

The reason he got attacked much more than they is that he was already criticized by a lot of people for publicly outing trans people and various other unkind stuff. So his statements about intergenerational relationships were just the tip on the iceberg, at least in my view.

But you will note his buddies on the Right stood by him no matter what he said about these other groups. Yet as soon as he said that, and the Left jumped on him for it relentlessly, did the Right support him then? Nope. They suddenly started apologizing for him, and were basically through with him. And Milo began apologizing for those statements himself, something he never felt the need to do about any of the previous controversial things he said. Why? Because those other controversial statements are cool with the Right, and he got as much support from those quarters as he did attacks from the Left. Defending intergenerational relationships, however, is presently uncool with anyone in the mainstream, Right or Left, and so virtually everyone turned on him.

Since the Left never liked him, can it just possibly be that they largely ignored the similar statements made by Maher and Takei because the former is a strong supporter of the mainstream Left; and the latter is an LGBQ who is a firm supporter of the mainstream Left himself who recently married another man, rather than a “turncoat” opponent of the Left like Milo?

Which correlates with my above statement that making claims that an intergen relationship was negative will gain far more support than disdain, with more than enough of the former to risk taking their share of the latter. But making the reverse claim? Widespread support to balance the widespread attacks is not gonna happen.

“often without the validity of what they say being questioned or investigated in any way.”

That’s another reason why it can be difficult for people to speak up. Because when they do then instead of them being supported, the person they accused gets chased by a lynch mob.

And they would not want this… because??!! Do they really love the person who supposedly raped them that much?!

Either that or no one believes them. Trump would be just one example of rape culture preventing people in power to face the consequences of their actions.

“Rape culture”?? Okay, I can see the PC SJW fluid pouring right out of you here. There is no “rape culture” in the U.S. that actually believes it’s okay for men to rape women. Doubting certain circumstances that are claimed is not the same thing as literally defending actual rape. What prevents Trump from facing the consequences of his actions is the power he possesses both economically and politically, not some mythical evil sub-culture of men that considers rape a legitimate activity to engage in; or that hate women so much they are cool with rape as an instrument of revenge; or whatever.

There is far, far more evidence of acceptance for misandry in our culture than there is actual support for real rape from anyone. And “rape culture” is not the same thing as misogyny. There is still an ample amount of misogyny in our culture, and that is wrong, but again, you will see far more people taking examples of it to task than you will people espousing it. This is most certainly not the case with examples of misandry, however; the vast bulk of the mainstream Democratic Left heartily embraces it, some of them openly and proudly carrying the actual label, while others insist hatred of men and suspicion of men is too justified for any type of negative label to be attached to it.

“Now, in case you are going to say that those who report negative experiences with intergen sexual contact have reason to be ashamed to report it, or subject to shame, I must duly protest, because the evidence for such a frequent claim just does not present itself with even a fair degree of empirical scrutiny.”

That a very strong claim I’d say.

I’d say it isn’t once you put aside the sentiment that gets upset when you hear something like that, and start looking at the empirical evidence in the media for the past few decades.

I think it’s not necessary to look at studies to find out if someone is or was ashamed and therefore found or has found it difficult to report something.

That sounds like a way of saying that competently correlated, properly peer-reviewed data only matters if it says what we want to hear.

It’s hardly a pleasant experience to tell someone else that one was e.g. raped.

I would argue that totally depends on the type of overall political climate we live in. It was once extremely shameful to admit that you were gay publicly, but no longer.

It’s similar with gay people being often silent about their experiences with prejudiced people or students not telling their parents they’re bullied in school. In this society everything is about being strong and independent and everything that goes against this narrative can be difficult to discuss and is potentially connected with a lot of shame.

If anything, I think the current climate has gone in the opposite extreme that you mentioned above, at least if the people making such claims happen to be considered minorities in any way.

“This is NOT to say that all such people are lying, because real abuse does happen.”

Most people are saying the truth. It’s comparatively seldom that someone lies about this.

And you can prove this… how, exactly? I can agree that the majority are telling the truth, but your contention that they very seldom lie is totally unproven. I would contend that the degree of truth vs. untruth in such claims can correlate heavily with the political climate. If it gets to the point where widespread sentiment is in favor of one gender or another based on sentimental reasons, and large numbers begin strongly benefiting politically from making the claims, it will encourage exponentially greater numbers of people in that demographic who lack scruples or who are not clinically sane to lie about such claims. Such a climate of disproportionate deference can also go a long way towards encouraging more people of the sentimentally favored demographic to re-interpret certain encounters in a specific way to absolve themselves of shame or regret.

They are shamed into silence, although not as often as those who report positive experiences. Especially when someone says that a person in their social environment raped them it’s hard for people to believe them because there’s the notion that “those things happen to other people but not to us” and that “only evil people do this but nobody I know personally”.

I think it’s far more likely in our current culture to go into denial that a good person you know could possibly be a MAP or acted honorably in an intergen relationship than it is to deny evil in your midst.

So denial is unfortunately for many people the easiest way to prevent their family or social environment being completely destroyed because of this. Everything is fine and then suddenly someone comes along and tells you e.g. a friend or family member did something horrible – of course for many people this too hard to accept and they’ll shame the person who was so brave telling this to them.

That is a circumstantial case that is not evident all the time. This is why such cases need to be investigated on a case-by-case basis. Also, the example you used was one I previously mentioned as much more likely to be a true allegation, because the situation involves a youth interacting with adults who truly have a great degree of power over the young person in question.

But it takes far less courage to make allegations of negativity towards an adult who had no real power over them, and who they could have rather easily avoided contact with if they truly wanted to. Claims of negativity in regards to the latter type of situation therefore rightfully invite more skepticism, especially when “manipulation” rather than “coercion” is alleged. Such an allegation is unlikely to destroy the lives of anyone other than the adult whom the allegations are directed at (unless the person making the allegations is still a youth and really does not want to be dragged into therapy; however, if they make the claim as an adult, that worry is out the door).

“it’s completely justified to ask for verification rather than just taking the claims at face value based on the belief that it’s rude or “unfair” to do otherwise.”

The appropriate response to someone saying they were raped is to believe them. That doesn’t mean starting a lynch mob against the accused person because revenge doesn’t help anyone. Believing them means helping them and listening to what they say.

No, that is not always the appropriate response if you do not know the person yourself, and do not know what type of person they are and what their entire life history is like; and if you also do not know anything about the person they are accusing. If you always believe the person who makes the claim without any knowledge of both the complainant and the accused on a personal level, then you risk hurting an innocent person and making a judgment before the investigation even starts. If you automatically believe the person simply due to their gender or age, then you are bowing to sentiment rather than any concern for justice, and that by definition is committing an injustice to the concept of justice. Putting politics before truth is never on the side of justice.

“Is it truly insensitive to at least question claims made by such people?”

That’s what the (in)justice system is for, not the public or any people who aren’t directly involved the situation.

Which is exactly what I told you up above. And we need to remember that despite how much we may want the accused to be guilty, and the complainant to be a rightful accuser who will receive justice.

Anyone else who questions such claims won’t find out anything by doing so and only hurt others by perpetuating the notion that such statements wouldn’t usually be trustworthy and done because of jealosy or revenge when in reality they’re actually only very rarely incorrect.

As I said before, no matter how often a certain demographic is or isn’t telling the truth, always believing them before conducting an investigation and asking justifiable questions if the circumstances warrant it is not serving the cause of justice. And the more you automatically presume a complainant is telling the truth than the accused, the more you create an unbalanced political environment that increasingly encourages more and more of the less scrupulous and clinically sane individuals from the demographic most often making the accusations to come out and lie. There is no one group of people who are alone too scrupulous or unaffected by personal flaws common to all humanity that they can be counted on not to take advantage of a power imbalance of any kind in their favor. This is why American jurisprudence is supposed to be against presuming guilt until all the facts come in.

If one wants to prevent unfairly accused persons to lose their job then there’re many much better ways than to question the accusers. For example one could speak up against lynch mobs or anything else that goes against the principle innocent until proven guilty.

This would work better if the accusations alone weren’t enough to destroy someone’s life even if a full investigation is conducted, the accused is fully exonerated, and the accuser is even proven to have lied for whatever reason. Presumption of guilt should never be made against the accused, and always believing a complainant whom you do not know personally necessitates precisely that. This is why making no presumptions until the facts come in is the most palatable for true justice to prevail. However, justice seems to be a concept the mainstream Left has all but abandoned in favor of message politics and sentimentality. And this is the core of my disagreement with both you and Peace, even if one or both of you have the best of intentions and their heart in the right place (I know Peace fairly well, and I can say I do sincerely believe his heart is in the right place concerning this matter).

To believe someone that something negative happened to them and that they’re sincere in telling their version of the story is after all not the same as saying the accused person is definitely guilty.

I’m sorry, Arthur, if you believe the person accusing someone else of rape is telling the truth, then I’m sorry, that necessitates believing the accused actually did it. There is no logical way around that. That would be like me saying I believe you when you told me that BoobBoo punched you in the face, but I still do not consider BooBoo guilty of doing that right now. I either think he did do it, think he didn’t do it, or I simply reserve believing one side or the other until I get enough of the facts to make a logical assessment.

I admire your patience in giving such a thorough reply, Dissy, but as moderator I feel obliged to read the whole lot and as it comes to nearly 3,000 words it has tested my patience too far. I may have to leave other very long contributions unpublished, so if you are reading this Arthur Dent please do not come firing back with another marathon.

Oh, you’ve no idea, Dissident. My postmodernist queerfeminist analysis of the kyriarchy has only just begun to trigger all the teleio cishet dyadic white rich able-bodied men. They’ll run away screaming while I’ll lecture them about rape culture and toxic masculinity. Beware the “PC SJW fluid”!

“so if you are reading this Arthur Dent please do not come firing back with another marathon.”

Oh, you’ve no idea, Dissident. My postmodernist queerfeminist analysis of the kyriarchy has only just begun to trigger all the teleio cishet dyadic white rich able-bodied men.

Admitting your political ideology is largely based on hatred of one particular demographic, and a desire to see a lack of responsibility demanded of the demographic whose rights you are fighting for, simply proves I was right that justice is not your main concern. And by admitting this is a kyiarchy, then you’re largely admitting that privilege can be very subjective and relative to a given situation. Not good, Arthur.

They’ll run away screaming while I’ll lecture them about rape culture and toxic masculinity. Beware the “PC SJW fluid”!

This implies that the egalitarians here fear the SJWs. We do not, because we spend large amounts of time fighting them and refuting them on many different places all across cyberspace, and offline places like the many academic institutions they have infiltrated. And if you want to lecture people, consider doing it about something based in reality, which “rape culture” most certainly is not. Too many of your ilk’s demands go against the basic principles of justice, which is why revenge politics that want to thrash due process are opposed so strongly.

“so if you are reading this Arthur Dent please do not come firing back with another marathon.”

That is indeed good for Tom as a mod. Maybe you should listen to what the egalitarians have to say once and a while, instead of continuing to promote your particular brand of hate and dismissing anything that doesn’t go along with it.

Of course it is. I’m the political opponent of your worst nightmares, adhering strictly to irrationality and and an urge to ban free speech.

“Maybe you should listen to what the egalitarians have to say”

Nope. I mean, you said yourself that I’m full of hate so why do you think I could be reasoned with?

But jokes aside, if you think that feminists like me are brainwashed and evil then why do you waste your time arguing? Isn’t that giving us that exactly what we want, namely attention?

When two people have very different political views, like you and me seem to have, then from my experience there’s no use in arguing. Especially online without body language and actual voice it’s highly unlikely to convince anybody who shares a completely other set of values. That’s why I made one response to state my perspective on the issue. After seeing your answer and that you most definitely don’t have similar worldviews I thought a little bit of self-irony on my side (describing myself as an “PC SJW fluid” as a homage to your neologism) would be a reconciling end to the conversation. I’m sorry that this self-irony obviously wasn’t as obvious as I hoped it would be. Well, I guess they’re teaching cultural marxism instead of humor these days at my safe space college in Cuckistan.

Noted. You will note, though, that the long responses followed long statements by the other posters I responded to; long initial posts can often begat long “marathon” responses (as you called them). I will try to brainstorm a means by which responses that require a lot of thought and words can be fully hashed out somewhere that do not require the moderating attention of one person alone. I’ll get back to you with suggestions on that via e-mail, since i fully understand the pressure that lengthy exchanges put on you as a moderator, while at the same time wanting to leave someplace for interested readers to follow longer responses. Is a listserv with multiple mods a possibility?

In other words, while short or moderate length posts continue to be made here, if a longer response is desired by a commenter, the respondent can say, “I’m gonna take this one to the listserv.” And the respondent can simply put “Responded on listserv!” on your blog once the completed response is posted on the listserv (if they want). I would be cool with helping moderate a listserv for longer responses, and try to recruit others for such a purpose, so you wouldn’t have to moderate there at all. This would not only take pressure off of you as a moderator, but it would allow posters who put a lot of thought into a lengthy response avoid receiving nothing more than a critique of its length in response (however justified by the mod), because such would be expected on the proposed listserv.

Hi Dissident, at risk of making ýou feel put apon, I should add that it’s not just mods that are frustrated by long posts. I can’t claim to be a master of brevity myself, but I know I probably miss a lot of good points from others, simply because I feel too rushed to read them.
I’very been reading your posts for a long time, here and elsewhere. Athough I find some of them irritating in the extreme”, you often make extremely good points. I’d love to see the abridged version sometime!
Sometimes your usages introduce rather than clarify ambiguities. For example, you only ever discuss minor attraction in terms of ‘youth’, but then you generalize your arguments as if they applied to all of our situations. Ì’m attracted to 6 year old girls. I think of them as children, and I think many things that are true of youth are not true of children or infants. Perhaps if you were more explicit about the scope of your assertions, you could make them more focused.
But don’t be discouraged from contributing! Most of your contributions have kernels of interesting and perceptive observation.

And this is my response to Sean down below, since that thread was getting spaghetti-fied too.

Thank you, Sean, and I do not mind you speaking up. As I have said before, and is clearly evident by those who have responded favorably to my overly long posts, whether long posts are good or bad is subjective, and not everyone agrees. We all differ in terms of preference to style as much as genre when it comes to reading, and finding the perfect balance can be difficult. I try to be succinct here because I know it’s a trying experience for our single moderator, though as I suggested to him, I hope to create a place for longer posts. There are also psychological factors in place that affect length; I have found that if a long essay is divided into different sections, like books are into chapters, readers no longer feel that odd necessity to complete the essay all in one sitting and thus that “rushed” feel you mentioned.

Yes, I can be irritating in the extreme with my passionate display of opinionated views, but if I never irritated anyone, I wouldn’t be a very good social activist, amirite? 😛 Being universally pleasant is just not what an activist does lol!

As for the problem of ambiguity that you mention, I do believe there are many cases regarding civil rights that apply more or less equally to children and postpubescents/young adolescents when it comes to youth liberation. That is why I use the word “youth” in a blanket fashion, just as I do the term “underagers.” However, I have often differentiated between children and adolescents when it comes to things like what type of sexual activities would be biologically safe; I have always believed that children’s sexual desires are less intense than that of adolescents and adults, and that mutually consensual interactions with them should be limited to what is best called “sex play,” not intercourse. In fact, I have often done my best to try to avoid using terms like “sex” when discussing intergen relations, because that term is ambiguous and too often brings to mind specifically intercourse and the full array of kinky sexual activities adults often desire and engage in. This is why I prefer terms like “sex play” and “sexual contact” over “sex” when discussing intergen liaisons, so I have striven to avoid ambiguity when possible in this manner. When it comes to civil rights, however, then yes, I do tend to go with more all-encompassing terms, much as “MAP” or “Kind” are blanket terms for pedophiles, hebephiles, and nepiophiles.

>I have always believed that children’s sexual desires are less intense than that of adolescents and adults,

(1) I need go no further than my own personal experience to refute this 100%, at least in my own case, and I doubt I am unique, although it depends on where we draw the line between children and adolescents. I think most people, including experts in various aspects of sex, would say a boy (I’ll stick with boys because I was one) is still a child (prepubescent) until there is some sign of puberty-related physical change, which would typically be the beginning of pubic hair growth and increasing size of the genitals, with liquid ejaculation (spermarche) coming later, well into the period known as pubescence. Fully three years before any of these signs (from age 10 onwards), I was experiencing dry orgasms that were just as intense and urgently desired as anything experienced in my teens or later. At that stage (10-13, or at least 10-12) I looked like a child and would generally have been considered a child, not an adolescent.

(2) Having said that, it is also important to acknowledge that boys in their earlier years (let’s say below 10, roughly, down to infancy) tend in far fewer individuals to be characterised be intense genital feelings or strong/urgent anticipatory arousal. This acknowledgement is important for both honesty and credibility. We can apply this generalisation to girls as well.

>…and that mutually consensual interactions with them should be limited to what is best called “sex play,” not intercourse.

(3) Based on (2) above, this seems a sensible use of language, and it occurs to me I may not have made this point clear enough myself in the past. I hereby resolve to do so in future. I might add that if this old dog can learn a new trick there is no reason why other commentators here should not be able to learn from each other. Dialogue is never hopeless when there is a willingness to listen.

I do not know if widespread lying and manipulations in the conviction of people of sex crimes have ever been documented, but every once in a while egregious examples emerge. On that basis, it is difficult to doubt that many more wrongful convictions never get a second look. The following statement from the Marshall Project illustrates this. The relevant article linked to is quite long.

“Bearing false witness. There are many stories of children who falsely allege that they are victims of sexual abuse by the adults in their lives. Here is one such story, centering on a divorced family in East Texas, which was torn apart by shoddy law enforcement work, dubious accusers, and a climate of fear and suspicion. This story, though, has a somewhat happier ending than many others in this growing genre of false accusations. TEXAS MONTHLY”

“every once in a while egregious examples emerge. On that basis, it is difficult to doubt that many more wrongful convictions never get a second look.”

I suppose that’s something everyone here can agree on. The (in)justice system is deeply flawed and many people go to prison despite having never done anything illegal. To be outrageed by that is I think very understandable, it would be odd not to be outraged by such cruel injustice. However, there’re so many cases of correct accusations that even very cruel cases are so frequent that unlike the comparatively more seldom occuring false accusations they don’t even get mentioned in the news because there’re just too many of them. Which in no way means one should pay less attention to false convictions – it’s not as if one had to chose between condemning one more than the other, that’d be a false dichotomy I think.

“There are many stories of children who falsely allege that they are victims of sexual abuse by the adults in their lives.”

So how does one prevent that something like this happens to a friend or relative? Well, I haven’t read any books or guidelines and I’m sure there’re people here who have informed themselves and know more about this than me but from my very naive perspective I’d first listen to the child and believe them that something bad happened to them and that therefore perhaps they don’t want to be near a certain person. Wether I actually think that what they say actually happened 100% the way they say it happened is totally irrelevant because that’s not for me to decide. Because irrespective of one’s own views of what could have happened what one should do next is talk with the accused person and listen to what they say about this. And after this one should talk with friends or other people one can trust. Perhaps some of them have an idea why the child says that and can therefore talk with the child (in a reasonable, friendly manner, not as if they’d be an investigator) and perhaps by doing that it turns out the accused person is actually innocent. However, if there’s still any doubt then it is necessary to call the police. Because it’s not the job of ordinary people to investigate if this doubt is correct. That would be mob law.

Unfortunately, the (in)justice system often isn’t much better but it is still better than mob law. The solution to that is to demand changes in the system, for example to transform punitive aspects of the (in)justice system into restorative justice in order to at least limit the damage done to people who’ve been falsely accused.

Apart from that, there of course has to happen a shift in how the public sees such things… And that’s a point where it things are starting to get very controversial I suppose:

The public for example generally sees men who fulfill certain criteria as potential rapists. Often, this public view is associated with feminism. Now, from a feminist perspective this can be true for certain types of liberal feminism (which is about equality within the current system and represented by quite conserative people like Hillary Clinton).

However, the vast majority of feminists, especially radical feminists have long been arguing that such views are incorrect and harmful to everyone. Instead, they argue that in this society men are raised in a way that can make some of them aggressive. So instead of seeing male people as inherently bad (as is commonly believed) they argue for a more compassionate approach. It’d take too long to go into details here but the common belief among both MAPs and feminists that they’d be two incompatible groups is one that urgently needs an examination. Suffice it to say that just like most radical gay rights activists, most radical feminists (Simone de Beauvior, Jane Rule, Gayle Rubin…) have been outspoken about the discrimination against MAPs as long as they could before being silenced by the more liberal parts of their movements as well as the mainstream.

“some sex-positive feminists do not consider all consensual activity between young adolescents and older people as inherently harmful.”

You would NEVER find a Wikipedia article about a topic connected to the gay rights movement to state something like that. Compared to “the” (as if there was a single one) feminist movement, the current gay rights movement is cowardish in relation to that.

In fact, it’d say being more open to feminism is the only hope MAPs have for a better future, just as much as other movements will have to include MAP rights in their demands lest they’ll struggle in vain.

Does that mean you should go to any feminist event and expect anything but extreme rejection when saying anything positive about minor attraction? Of course not. But that’s nowhere the case, not even at the most radical queer events you can be sure to be accepted. The feminist movement is just one very slightly less hostile place, just like other civil rights movements are. So hate the movement all that you want for it’s hypocrisy, but don’t be too quick in thinking the ideas behind it would be useless.

A feminist rant on a MAP blog, how often do you see that? Well, I can see that this post is pretty long and not necessarily very coherent so delete it if you want, Tom.

>I can see that this post is pretty long and not necessarily very coherent so delete it if you want, Tom.

Long, but by no means uninteresting. Your writing could be improved quite a lot though by citing a few actual facts/figures and personal etc stories etc. Pure argument is bricks without straw. Same applies to other commentators too but, hey, in the last analysis I am glad to have readers who want to write here, so I don’t want to put anyone off as long as they are polite, relevant and coherent (which you are, Arthur). Also, you have at least given one important link, so perhaps I am being a bit harsh.

>quite conserative people like Hillary Clinton

Unlike many here, I don’t hate Hillary. Perhaps I should, but I remember her as quite a radical writer on children’s rights back in the 1970s before she married Bill and was still Hillary Rodham. I made use of her work in my book Paedophilia: The Radical Case.

Just one other thing: I do hope you’ve ditched that ridiculous old dressing gown by now, Arthur? 🙂 And do give my regards to Ford Prefect!

I can see that this post is pretty long and not necessarily very coherent so delete it if you want, Tom.

Long, but by no means uninteresting.

I concur, but I must say, Tom, that I wish you were this gracious with me whenever I make an overly long post, instead of simply mostly complaining about it’s length and how it tried your patience, which is very frustrating considering the hard work and time I put into it despite the understandable inconvenience it caused you. I’m not saying your critiques are without merit and I do see your point being the only moderator here, and you have every right to complain.

But then, I see you say this to Arthur when he apologized for an overly long post, after you told both me and him just the other day not to make overly long posts:

“Long, but by no means uninteresting.” And then: “… in the last analysis I am glad to have readers who want to write here, so I don’t want to put anyone off as long as they are polite, relevant and coherent (which you are, Arthur).”

I wish your mood was as polite and appreciative regarding the substance of my post vs. the understandable critique of its length and my admittedly bad habit of repeating certain points in different words (which I tried very hard not to do as I wrote and self-edited) as it was to Arthur here. Especially since you have a number of commentators who have openly stated appreciation for that substance, even if they are not seeing it from the mod’s perspective.

So, I will take some time to contemplate if I should bother to even try to make a response to Arthur considering the length of his post, and if I do, then try to figure out a way I can make it as short as possible.

Unlike many here, I don’t hate Hillary. Perhaps I should,

You likely would, Tom, if you spent a day looking at all the policies she has supported and enacted for the past 30 years, first as the unofficial “Co-President” of the U.S. during her husband’s eight years in office; then, as senator of a U.S. state; and then, as Secretary of State. And then, considering the nature of the Clinton Foundation. I find that utterly impossible to overlook, especially when I look at that state of the world today while knowing her strong complicity in it, including her mad attempt to push the U.S. into war with Russia (which is part of the reason being the revival of red-baiting in the U.S.). It may be just me, but that is why I find it impossible to find a “soft spot” for her in my heart despite all of that.

but I remember her as quite a radical writer on children’s rights back in the 1970s before she married Bill and was still Hillary Rodham. I made use of her work in my book Paedophilia: The Radical Case.

That person no longer exists, as that was written during the days when it was politically safe for people in mainstream politics to write it, and during the days before she tasted power and became arguably the biggest monkey wrench in the eye of the future SJW movement, save perhaps for Thatcher. She was still a Goldwater supporter, though, so her heart and mind was always Republican.

>I concur, but I must say, Tom, that I wish you were this gracious with me whenever I make an overly long post, instead of simply mostly complaining about it’s length and how it tried your patience, which is very frustrating considering the hard work and time I put into it despite the understandable inconvenience it caused you.

If I am less gracious to you it is because you do not seem to listen. As for the hard work you put in, I do not doubt your posts take a long time, but you would be able to cut that time down and make better posts simply by prioritising. If there are 10 points with which you disagree, do not answer all of them.

This is the stage at which you need to think hard and make a difficult choice. Decide what is most important and then answer just ONE point, or maybe two. The end result will be more readable and memorable. The other issues can wait for another day or may not really need to be resolved. If they too are important they will come up again.

Or are you too old (or proud/unselfcritical) a dog to learn a new trick or two?

Which in no way means one should pay less attention to false convictions – it’s not as if one had to chose between condemning one more than the other, that’d be a false dichotomy I think.

Which is why I argue that impartiality on the part of both the law–and the public–is necessary until all the facts come in. Destroying the life of an innocent person can be every bit as cruel and emotionally disheartening as a rape.

So how does one prevent that something like this happens to a friend or relative? Well, I haven’t read any books or guidelines and I’m sure there’re people here who have informed themselves and know more about this than me but from my very naive perspective I’d first listen to the child and believe them that something bad happened to them and that therefore perhaps they don’t want to be near a certain person.

As a youth liberationist, I will argue that children should never be forced to spend time around any adult they do not want to be around. Which is why I have said it’s much more likely that a youth is telling the truth in such a situation than those involving adults they could avoid any time they wanted to but chose to spend time with anyway.

Wether I actually think that what they say actually happened 100% the way they say it happened is totally irrelevant because that’s not for me to decide.

Thank you. I fully agree with the rest of that paragraph.

However, the vast majority of feminists, especially radical feminists have long been arguing that such views are incorrect and harmful to everyone. Instead, they argue that in this society men are raised in a way that can make some of them aggressive. So instead of seeing male people as inherently bad (as is commonly believed) they argue for a more compassionate approach. It’d take too long to go into details here but the common belief among both MAPs and feminists that they’d be two incompatible groups is one that urgently needs an examination.

I do agree with this, and in fact I always have. What I may not agree with, however, is that all of what is today referred to as “feminism” is truly about equality. Too many of the loudest individuals who call themselves “radical feminists” are not about equality or compassion at all, but are basically about comeuppance. They disproportionately focus on the admitted degree of negative (or “toxic,” as they call it) attitudes males often exhibit due to how they’re raised in society, while ignoring the many examples of negative behavior from females that also results from a society that raises the genders to compete against each other for the emotional upper hand in relationships.

In fact, it’d say being more open to feminism is the only hope MAPs have for a better future, just as much as other movements will have to include MAP rights in their demands lest they’ll struggle in vain.

I will agree with you on that in regards to genuine feminism, which nowadays is often called traditional, equality, egalitarian, or “first wave” feminism. But that SJW nonsense that rose to political and academic power in the 1980s by latching onto the “feminist” label has put a major black eye on the whole idea of feminism and needs to be purged from the movement. Otherwise, the noble history of feminism as it was traditionally envisioned will end up besmirched along with revenge-based liberal identity politics. The mainstream liberal brand of identity politics is not the polar opposite of the right-wing version (white-male supremacy), but merely its flip side.

Egalitarians like myself would find no more than very minor disagreements with equality feminists. But the liberal idenitarians that are besmirching feminism, progressive politics, liberalism, and socialism by latching onto all of those terms… not so much.

The feminist movement is just one very slightly less hostile place, just like other civil rights movements are. So hate the movement all that you want for it’s hypocrisy, but don’t be too quick in thinking the ideas behind it would be useless.

In all fairness, no mainstream group is yet ready to support either MAP rights or youth rights en masse. It will take some time, but MAPs need to strive for it, as we cannot achieve our rights alone.

Even in Sweden, where feminist dogma have influenced law to the point that nearly all sex is rape, not all those accused of rape are formally charged, much less convicted [1].

Bending over backwards to such dogma, at most those convicted can be said to have been correctly accused.

As for your feminist apology:

Girls, not to mention the men loving them, fall outside the feminist domain. That some few feminists may have supported limited conditional rights for a subset of girls does not erase the fact that a far larger subset of girls had vastly more rights in the 19th century, before feminists attacked those very rights [2]. Pockets of resistance still remained, such as the Johns Winstead marriage in Tennessee in 1937 [3], not to mention some brave Conservatives, who dared defend finding younger women attractive [4].

Given the historical record, I don’t imagine a feminist future would be better for MAPs.

I mean, I think it’s pretty telling that it was Eunice’s mother, not Eunice herself, that defended the marriage in the paper. Fighting feminism in order to advance youthloving is like fighting youthloving to combat child abuse – it picks an easy scapegoat and does nothing to actually help youth.

If you fault Eunice’s mother for defending her daughter’s choice, do you also fault the parents proclaiming their kids are trans or gay and trying to shield those kids from criticism?

Not that such kids, living in the US today, would ever face what Eunice and her family did. I consider Eunice and her family heroic for standing up against the busybodies. Such local tolerance of pedophiles is probably as good as it gets for quite some time. I somehow doubt Progressives will be howling about our wedding cakes!

Fighting feminism in order to advance youthloving is like fighting youthloving to combat child abuse

This would only be true if youth lovers had a historical record of abusing youths and advocating for their abuse equivalent to that of feminism with regard to stripping young people of rights.

(Perhaps this is what some of you actually believe, given the apologies for feminism.)

You need look no further than to young pedophiles or the kids loving pedophiles to see how helpful feminism is. Do you imagine it’s nice for a 7-year-old to be told the friend she loves is nothing but a rapist? That he’d hurt her in some unspecified awful manner (rape, all sex is rape!), because he’s a pedophile.

Kids will have this dogma repeated in school, at least until they reach university.

Given the historical record, I fail to see how feminism meets the definition of scapegoat and why fighting feminism cannot help youths.

If a parent says their kid is gay or trans and I don’t get to hear anything from the child themselves, then yeah, I’m gonna be a bit suspicious. I don’t care what Eunice’s mother thinks – I care about what Eunice thinks, and I don’t have that information. I personally am against the overall institution of marriage, as it keeps a stranglehold on specific rights and is the source of both the idea of the nuclear family and a high amount of abuse.

I think it’s unfair to point to feminism and say “They did it.” The socio-cultural forces that create “the pedophile” in today’s world are multi-faceted and intertwining. The political image of the “innocent child” has been used increasingly often, with almost everything under the sun being pointed to as something that will “corrupt” a youth’s innocence. The expansion of sex offender laws and listings as well as increased media availability means the specter of “the pedophile” looms large in a parent’s life. Sex education which emphasizes the dangers of sex and only an adult’s “bad touch” and which doesn’t meaningfully discuss the more positive and complicated aspects of relationships don’t help anyone and can make it difficult or shameful to express one’s desires. And on and on, all fusing to create the Pedo Panic. Saying that many people are against adult-child sex and think of it solely as rape because of ~feminism~ feels like you’re discounting a lot of factors.

So overall, I’m gonna keep trucking on my gender liberatory path as I see it helping the youth I love. I wish to inspire and teach, but not dominate and push my ideals onto youth like so many adults in their life have. I want youth to have options, basically.

In fact, I think looking at the vocabulary, theories, and tactics of feminism is helpful for youth lib because youth are currently thought of the way women used to be. They are assumed to be too mentally incompetent to do certain tasks and to be awarded certain rights, they are treated like the property of another human being, they are thought to have no sexual desire of their own (and if they do then they’re seen as “damaged”), etc. The idea, then, is to raise youth up to the point where the variety of problems that people have with intergen relations have been nullified.

For part of the problem, refer to my response in this thread to Nada. For another part, genuine equality feminism (which is not that hate-filled “SJW” nonsense) will still not stand in support of youth liberation until youths under 18 are recognized as a legitimate minority group, deserving of the same expression of rights as any legal adult. Otherwise, any group of people who possess the status of legal adult are not likely to even recognize them as full citizens deserving of agency. An exception to that legal adult rule are MAPs, since despite our legal adult status we are nevertheless persecuted and marginalized in ways other than the specific type of legal oppression enacted against youths. There is no group of people existing in the West who experience true systematic oppression anymore except underagers, Kind people (whether they have a criminal record or not), and those legally designated sex offenders (which may or may not be Kind). It can be argued that Muslims, immigrants, and anyone legally designated a “terrorist” may come close in the current political climate, however.

1) The word “feminism” has been bastardized by the reactionary SJW movement, which poses as “radical feminism.” It’s nothing more than an organized form of misandry with anti-white and anti-cis-hetero attitudes trying to pass themselves off as “progressive” politics. It has nothing to do with the first wave feminism, which was about empowering women and striving for equality for everyone. Its logical evolutionary successor is egalitarianism, not some further “wave” of female-centric focus.The SJWs act as if the civil rights movement for women and other minority groups has just started a few years ago, and as if they are as systematically oppressed now as they ever were. That is utter bollix, as my British friends would say. Systematically oppressed minorities do not have the power to scream in the faces of their alleged oppressors and shout “Check your privilege!” at every opportunity, have a major presence in the media, influence the law to favor their demographic in many instances, and start entire academic departments at universities that wield tremendous power and influence. They are seeking power, not empowerment, and the inversion of previous power disparities, not the establishment of equality. But linking traditional feminism to the ironically named SJW movement is sort of like linking Marxism/socialism to Stalin’s system; or MAPs with child molesters. There are enormous differences despite the popular poltiically motivated conflation.

2) The feminist movement, even the first wave, abandoned support for girls as the 20th century marched on, and focused entirely upon women who were legal adults. Even the equality feminists were products of their time and subject to heavy societal indoctrination, since they are human. This is why prior to the 1970s, they were not united with homosexuals, and no less a personage than Betty Friedman refused to accept lesbians into their political circle out of fear that doing so would hurt their growing progress. Sound familiar, my friend?

>Systematically oppressed minorities do not have the power to scream in the faces of their alleged oppressors and shout “Check your privilege!” at every opportunity, have a major presence in the media, influence the law to favor their demographic in many instances, and start entire academic departments at universities that wield tremendous power and influence.

“Systematically oppressed minorities do not have the power to scream in the faces of their alleged oppressors”

That is the case in dictatorships. In more democratic countries however, there is a different mechanism: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34LGPIXvU5M In short, People are allowed to protest but their protest is filtered in different ways so that it becomes considerably less effective. One example: It takes a second to tell a lie but it can take hours or longer to refute it. The mass media doesn’t allow so much time – every response has to be very short. This causes audiences to think anyone questioning the system more than on a superficial level is unreasonable.

“and start entire academic departments at universities that wield tremendous power and influence.”

Academic departments? Academic activism is a joke. If academia had much influence then why is there still tuition in the US? Why does the US still spend 8x more money on military than education? By now the White house apparently doesn’t even want to use words like climate change or LGBT anymore. Doesn’t sound like much academic influence to me.

So how do we (whoever “we” are) gain traction. How do we win against the machine? And if we can’t, what is the point of even discussing anything? Evidently you think there is some point or you would not be posting on the matter.

Arthur DentFeb 25, 2018 @ 19:33:29

“you think there is some point”

I post here out of curiosity, not because I’d be on some crusade against the system.

“if we can’t, what is the point of even discussing anything? ”

I find it interesting how your last questions seems to presume that, without winning, anything could be pointless. Not implying or assuming that you think this, but that’d be a very sad, narrow-minded worldview to have. To think it’s all about winning…

To think it’s all about losing may be even worse, and your post does seem rather to be along these lines. It reminds us what we are already all too well aware of but says nothing else. So where is the “value added”?

Arthur DentFeb 25, 2018 @ 21:02:02

“To think it’s all about losing may be even worse”

Not necessarily, though.

“your post does seem rather to be along these lines.”

Does it? I hoped it’d point to other ways of thinking than in terms of losing and winning. Sometimes, a refusal to fight can be the greatest victory. There’re many ways to make things better, fighting is just one among many. There’ll always be people and institutions to fight against but there’ll also always be new concepts to explore and opportunities to help others.

“So where is the “value added”?”

Most discussions here seem to be about how to prove these evil prejudiced people wrong once and for all: ‘Just one more study by Bruce Rind and then, finally, James Cantor will lose his reputation. Let’s just continue to fight another five years and eventually truth and justice will prevail over their lies.’

I doubt that this is a good approach. Not saying it’d be completely useless but I don’t think that this is the area where you can improve the lives of MAPs significantly. Prove me wrong but the historic record doesn’t look very promising to me.

So if you want some value added then let’s talk for example about the other two approaches mentioned above. Let’s talk about how we can establish, build, and improve the communities of MAPs and their friends. What’s wrong with our support systems and what needs to be done to change that? Or, as I’ve done a bit in previous posts, let’s get abstract and look at how our situation relates to feminism (or whatever theories you like) and how we can learn from this to improve our communities.

But let’s not waste time on some petty discussions about what Virped et al. think and lose ourselves in sample sizes, methodologies of ancient meta-analyses, or whatever else Finkelhor and Reisman might made up for us to refute.

>Let’s talk about how we can establish, build, and improve the communities of MAPs and their friends. What’s wrong with our support systems and what needs to be done to change that?

OK, that’s good. Do you have any suggestions along those lines? You might want to write a simple comment or even submit a guest blog if you have enough ideas.

>Or, as I’ve done a bit in previous posts, let’s get abstract and look at how our situation relates to feminism (or whatever theories you like) and how we can learn from this to improve our communities.

I still regard myself as an equal opportunities/libertarian feminist (as opposed to the victim-oriented, mysandrist variety) so I have no problem seeing some potential in this.

>But let’s not waste time on some petty discussions about what Virped et al. think and lose ourselves in sample sizes, methodologies of ancient meta-analyses, or whatever else Finkelhor and Reisman might made up for us to refute.

I don’t think you have commented directly on the subject of my current blog, have you? It is difficult to remember everyone’s contributions now there have been nearly 200 of them, but I suspect I would recall anything directly related to the research I cited. Did you even read it? What brought you to Heretic TOC anyway? I slightly had to impression you were carrying on previous business with an old sparring partner at some other site.

As for Finkel’s hoary old studies and Reisman’s far-from-recent-rants it sounds as though you have been away for a while. A case of getting disillusioned decades ago with the research route to credibility, perhaps? If so, that would be very understandable given the reception given to the now also ancient meta-analyses by Rind et al.

Personally, though, I am rather heavily invested in this area so dissing it is very much treading on my blue suede shoes. Compared to other forms of activism, academic research still offers opportunities for really interesting areas of engagement. Not everyone shares my enthusiasm, for sure, but I think quite a few probably do, otherwise it becomes hard to explain why this blog, which is consistently research-oriented, attracts quite a lot of attention, including yours. I think people like to see well-researched information of various sorts, whether statistical (the Nordic research), or neurological (the German stuff) or well-informed news analysis or whatever. Without this material Heretic TOC would certainly forfeit its USP and itself cease to add value.

General comment and reasoning, by contrast, while readers do benefit from engaging in it, does tend to just go round and round in circles. People tend to make plausible suggestions for better strategies and activities but then not a lot gets done. So is it just a matter of sounding off? Don’t get me wrong. I am happy for you to sound off but forgive me if I don’t leap in the air and hail the new messiah whenever someone comes with a halfway interesting idea. That would be quite exhausting and not a little foolish.

LibertineFeb 24, 2018 @ 00:57:19

“If you automatically believe the person simply due to their gender or age, then you are bowing to sentiment rather than any concern for justice, and that by definition is committing an injustice to the concept of justice. Putting politics before truth is never on the side of justice.” Absolutely, Point well made. I think someone needs to tell that to that wench, Alison Saunders!

Exposure ITV documentary about abuse in boarding school. listening to some of the stories, it seems self-evident that many of these teachers didn’t obtain ‘consent’ shall we say. in the 70s when PIE were campaigning for consensual child/adult sexual relations, these teachers were just taking it regardless!

“The Oscar-nominated film “Call Me by Your Name” is a coming-of-age story about a 17-year-old named Elio and his brief romance with a 24-year-old grad student, Oliver, who comes to work with Elio’s father.

Some, including author Cheyenne Montgomery, say they’re disturbed by the age difference between the two protagonists — one portrayed as a boy, the other a man.

Montgomery (@cowboy_montg), who was abused by a teacher as a high school student, joins Here & Now’s Robin Young to discuss why she sees the movie as a “deftly directed, beautifully photographed, wonderfully acted master class in sexual predation and abuse.”

THE MOST WTF??!! PART:

“As a 15-year-old or a 16-year-old, I very much believed that I was in control, and that I was able to consent, and I would say, that’s part of being 16, is you have that illusion that you’re on top of things.” — Cheyenne Montgomery

What?!! Even 15-to-17-year-olds are now no more than “innocent children” who couldn’t consent even if they actually did?!! These Cheyenne Montgomery’s words reminds of the “confessions” of the witch processes of some old Inquisition era when some poor women (and, occasionally, men) were so constantly, intensely and massively persuaded that they are in league with the Devil that some of them, in the end, apparently belived their Devil connections themselves (while initially they vigourously denied any accusations).

The perspective of the age of consent being moved to, say, 21 – with the resulting change of status for 20-year-olds to “innocent children” – does not seem as unlikely, let alone unreal, perspective today…

” is you have that illusion that you’re on top of things.” — Cheyenne Montgomery”….Well, when I was 17 I remember going for long runs, was that an illusion: I also remember fixing my car, maybe that was fantasy too!

So, I’ve noticed this tendency within the Kind community to become upset when anybody speaks about the harm they felt when engaged in an intergen relationship as a youth. The author didn’t say that public policy should be changed; they are simply relaying how their own experience, which they considered abuse, is reminiscent of scenes within the movie. Even though I don’t agree with the author’s conclusions (especially about the movie), wouldn’t you say that their disapproval of intergen relations based off of their own experiences is similar to many people’s approval of intergen relationships based off of their own experiences? Basically, do many in the Kind community only accept a person’s lived experience and emotions – and the conclusions drawn from them – concerning intergen relationships if those experiences were positive?

I’ve also seen a general tendency within the Kind community to seriously discount many of the factors that go into the relationships between those legally considered children and those legally considered adults and to simplify it down. I personally do not find many arguments of theirs to be satisfactory in today’s society and because of how society and the individuals within it treat youth. I think a youth’s ability (and, really, anybody’s ability) to consent and make safe sexual choices is not based on a single factor such as age. Consent should be as simple as “yes” or “no,” but life is often more complicated than that. A person’s understanding of consent as well as sexual agency and relations is based upon a variety of social and personal factors such as sex education, upbringing, and gendered messages. From the moment somebody is born, they are besieged on all sides by messages from those around them about what is right, what is wrong, what to do, and what not to do, and all of this is done by adults in their life. Through school they are further introduced to authority figures and adults from whom they take guidance and (more commonly) orders from. Many adults still pull the “because I’m the adult/because I’m older/because I say so!” card, and this does nothing but reinforce to kids that adults, those older than them, and authority figures are to be listened to, followed, and not questioned. Things like that, as well as messages sent about the differences between adults and children, can interfere with a kid’s perception of and behavior in any relationship between them and an adult.

I am all for consensual, collaborative sexual relations between children and adults which are free from the constraints of any power differences. I do not, however, believe that pro-reformers who are obsessed only with changing AoC laws are correct. That is not to say that AoC laws should not be reformed; I believe they should, as they ignore a variety of factors that determine whether or not a relationship is consensual and are obsessed with an imaginary “boundary line” that does much less to determine the health of a relationship than factors which are not brought into account in statutory rape cases. However, changing these laws alone will not do anything when youth are still ruled by the reigns of authority and have emotional abuse, neglect, and coercion heaped upon them by the adults and institutions in their life.

> Basically, do many in the Kind community only accept a person’s lived experience and emotions – and the conclusions drawn from them – concerning intergen relationships if those experiences were positive?

The difference is that it takes courage to speak of a positive experience when it goes very much against prevailing social attitudes. It is much easier to re-interpret one’s once positive experiences as negative when most of society will be applauding the (possibly craven) re-imagining of personal history.

That’s the thing though, isn’t it. What about relationships which were clearly experienced in a negative fashion even during the time of the relationship? These exist even without social forces, and I think their existence should be acknowledged along with positive relationships, and steps should be taken to eliminate the factors which cause such negative relationships in the first place. I of course disagree with the prevailing theory that an age gap is the main reason for negative relationships, but I think it might be good to stop and listen to people who experienced negative relationships to try and pinpoint what it was that made it a bad experience.

I think you are right Peace, we should indeed stop and listen to those negative experiences to pin point precisely why….only, that’s all we are ever allowed to hear….over and over and over again….even in circumstances where the young person originally made no complaint. The issue on the whole in respect to harm is that it is essentially unfashionable to say otherwise due to the hysteria whipped up by the media, lapped up by sheeple, and to make the topic unquestionable and infinitely unapproachable without being labelled as a child rapist / predator.

I don’t think we’re fundamentally disagreeing. The insistence that intergen relations are de facto abusive isn’t good and neither is a shutting down of desperately needed conversations surrounding youth and sexuality which many times are even shut off from the youth who have a stake in it. It’s definitely frustrating.
I guess I’d like both the Kind community and the rest of society to fully respect a youth’s voice when it comes to matters like this. People who say “You experienced abuse even if you don’t realize it” aren’t doing anybody any favors, but neither are people who insist that what somebody went through “isn’t a big deal” and are “playing victim.” Both, I believe, take the voice away from youth and are rather attempts to frame the youth’s experiences in a way which furthers each side’s agenda.
Sorry if I sound like I’m on my high horse here, haha. I’m not trying to say you guys don’t know and think about these things, because you do. I’m not some sort of arbiter of justice, so these are just my two cents.

There is no argument from me here, all the necessary points are being stated. It is a multi faceted issue. As Dissident has stated above, any Kind person who wants AOC laws abolished without addressing other issues particularly regarding the rights of young people is asking for trouble, whereby there will be more harm from coerced, manipulated forms of intergen sexual relationships. On the other hand, society at large is very much biased to addressing all forms of said relationships as harmful by default, and any positive experience of a young person in this area is addressed with therapy brain washing them to think of this as harmful because of power inbalance.

I think a as Sean has mentioned, although we as Kind would not be responsible for any iatrogenic harm caused to a young person directly, obviously we would be putting said young person in harms way in this respect. It is an important consideration, and in this situation, even if one were to discuss this with the young person beforehand, if such a clandestine relationship were to be discovered at any time, the odds are said Kind would be portrayed as the manipulator, ‘programming’ for such eventualities.

“So, I’ve noticed this tendency within the Kind community to become upset when anybody speaks about the harm they felt when engaged in an intergen relationship as a youth”

I agree. There’s a willful blindness among MAPs to the real harm that children suffer thru not just sexual victimization but also harmful consequences of sexual activity they may have agreed to and enjoyed. A common pattern is a boy has a sexual relationship with a man and then has to deal with hateful homophobia (from others or internalized). This doesn’t mean the relationship was intrinsically harmful. The harm in this case is sociogenic, BUT IT IS STILL HARM. I’ve collected numerous cases where this dynamic has resulted in the boy’s suicide, and that’s gut wrenching.

So I agree with Peace, not just harmless but positively beneficial sexual relationships between adults and children are possible, but the potential for harm in the current context is real and generally high. It annoys me no end when this potential is minimized.

“it is society that is the cause of the problem in these circumstances.”

That’s right. I’m not saying the harm is always caused by social responses, but in very many cases it is. I’m also saying that it is still harm that must be avoided. Knowingly exposing a child to probable harm is not an act of love.

Social control of sexuality is a reality. It ought to be challenged and it might even change but, in the present moment, it’s likely effect needs to be accounted for. Some children are resilient in the face of social disapproval, but we are all social beings and we, in particular, understand the pain of stigma and exclusion.

We, as minor attracted people, need to be very aware of any similar predicament we might create for a child.

I think much of the problem, Sean, is that all too often, the MAP is given sole blame for instances of iatrogenic and sociogenic harm, and the laws and societal attitudes aren’t given anywhere near the degree of scrutiny that they should by mainstream media and research outlets. Or, at the very least, the major contribution to the harm made by the laws and society are downplayed compared to the degree of emphasis on the MAP’s part of the blame. This is not to argue that it’s “okay” for MAPs to risk breaking the law. Rather, it’s made to make sure that society itself is not let off the hook or given a free pass for its own serious complicity in the harm that can result from intergen relationships.

Also, I cannot agree that a MAP starting an illegal clandestine relationship with a minor indicates a lack of actual love, or that it’s not an act of love. Love has many sides to it, and one of these is the well known manner in which true love can blind people to many things, and cause us to make stupid decisions at times. Love isn’t all positive, and we should never make the error of thinking otherwise. A lack of common sense should not, IMO, be confused with an absence of love. Could such acts be called selfish? Yes, they can, but love often does make us selfish, again to the point where we throw common sense aside and make unwise decisions as a result.

There’s a willful blindness among MAPs to the real harm that children suffer

Perhaps among the subset of MAPs ranting about the lived experience of “victims” and sexual victimization.

If harm is harm, is the anti-pedophilia children are indoctrinated into at early age harmless, in particular to children loving, or being, MAPs?

A common pattern is a boy has a sexual relationship with a man and then has to deal with hateful homophobia

Such boy would likely be dealing with propagandists, telling him being homosexual has nothing to with pedophilia, as well as the more malicious, insisting it should get better for the former, while the latter should avoid kids.

In Western society, where homosexuality is extremely accepted, in particular compared to pedophilia, why would homophobia not only be a factor, but the major factor?

How wonderful it is that you fault me for not believing in your claims, for which you’ve offered no evidence. As for harm being harm, at least be honest enough and admit what matters is the alleged harm to some designated “victims”. Harm to those falling outside of this domain matters not.

I’m determinedly agnostic on this question, and I reserve the right to fence sit because the issue has no practical impact on my life

As males and girls falls outside of the feminist domain, what would be the practical impact of sticking to materialism, being agnostic or non-believing with regard to feminism too?

Since the arbitrary restrictions following for the implementation of feminism has had a large practical impact on the lives of those I love and hold in highest regard, I can’t justify agnosticism on logical or ethical grounds.

Animism, the trivial concerns of objectification and dehumanisation, not to mention the contempt for matter, seem very strange coming from a materialist, much less a scientist. You’re aware of the Turing machine and the limits of models? Would you love a girl less, because she had very different hardware and software, the states of which were unknown to you?

these are great questions Nada, and I will return to them! sorry to all esp warbling that I’m run ragged right now. suffice it to say a model implies a transfer function from one representation to another, which violates the idea of an essence, noumenon or ding an sich, existing beyond the limits of our perception. obviously this is where real little girls, along with the rest of reality, all ultimately dwell. nothing I can say has any claim to completeness in this realm. like the turing machine, my materialist science is universal within its somewhat austere domain. and within this domain I’ve also found a kind of animism, rooted in the idea of subjectivity. but that’s all I have to go on, sadly.

I am confused by both of you using the term “Turing machine”. Or did you mean the Turing test? The former is a conceptual universal computer devised by Turing, and the latter is Turing’s suggestion for determining whether a machine was human like enough to convince an actual human being that the machine he was blindly conversing with was also an actual human being. My own opinion is that many actual human beings would fail the Turing test.

The Turing machine is a basic abstract model of a computer or an algorithm, with a central unit and a tape to read and write on. All known computer hardware and software can be simulated by such a device. It was invented by Alan Turing, who showed that some problems cannot be solved in their full generality by a Turing machine.

Yep, as Christian says, some problems can’t be solved, even in a system with no unknowns. This was proved by Kurt Gödel.

And I did mean Turing machine, and in reference to this exact problem. Materialism (rejection of the metaphysics of Cartesian dualism and its distinction of mind from matter) is made scientific by method and logic, not by belief in matter.

But if the formal methods of logic itself, including mathematics, can be shown to be insufficient to complete a proof within its own domain, what chance science?

So, science is what we have, but it’s no oracle of truth. Mystery abounds. Love is a mystery. I see a little girl on the street, her summer frock swinging with her sassy hips and I just think: wtf? Putting science on this is like putting a postage stamp on the Niagara Falls.

But for asking and answering the questions we need to ask, and we need others to ask, the ones about the nature of human emotion and nurturing and bonding, and the roots of puritanism and sexual anxiety, we need to have our ducks in a row, and that doesn’t come about by hanging a dream catcher in the window and lighting a joss stick. It happens by gathering data, figuring out what it means and formulating an argument that can stand up to scrutiny and (in our case) hostility.

I can’t say I disagree more, Sean. The very ostensives, imperatives, and declaratives that course more-or-less unconsciously through our everyday utterance long precede (and supervene on) any collection of “data” and in this essential respect I think our pal over at DailyAnti-Feminist is barking up the most savvy tree of all when he says the mission must be NOT to cravenly seek acceptance as “paedosexuals” within the LGBT crowd &c, but to try and set about somehow ‘disarming’ the word “paedophile’ itself… (as TakeARisk NZ’s Peter put it, the term is nothing less than “the pissing-pot of the whole world” by now). The way the blogger himself put it, is that we should work to “desensitize” people to the word… I’m trying to decide which of these verbs best describes a conceivable plan-of-action…! Most of all, it shows excellent sense where Anonymous’ Beginner’s “Guide to Destroying Pedophobia in the 21st Century” veered into the utterly daft IMO – as when s/he suggested that the ultimate goal was to eliminate all specialness of any kind from the naked – or even partially naked, lord, lord – human body! In other words, OUT with Eros, IN with God knows what!

I’m at a bit of a loss as to what you disagree with warbling, given my comment presents a somewhat contradictory set of assertions.

But Peter at TakeARisk is a smart guy, and I can’t say I entirely disagree with him, or you. I think we might be firing past each other by overdetermining the target of our respective arguments. In fact, we have a common target, and we should try to identify it in concert, rather than a winner takes all result.

The relationship between science and politics is problematic because science purports to be objective when it seldom is. But objectivity is one of it’s aspirations. What this means politically is that policy should be ‘evidence based’, founded in data and analysis, rather than being an expression of dogma or emotion. These are precisely the elements that make ‘democracy’ such a double edged sword.

The two common negative reactions the role of science in politics are quite distinct.

First, their are those who make decisions on social issues based on personal, subjective values (‘common sense’, ‘morality’, ‘tradition’, ‘gut feelings’ etc). This group tends to to be socially conservative and hostile to emancipatory social movements. They see ‘science’ as intrinsically suspect and having nothing to contribute to these kinds of questions.

The second group, of which you and Peter might be included, consider scientific inquiry hopelessly reductive and simplistic when applied to social issues. Ironically, you also seem to reject the social sciences as being ‘soft’ and imprecise. Instead, you appeal to an ad hoc collection of heuristics and anecdotes, drawing conclusions that orbit (inevitably) around your own political interests.

That’s fine, but it has no authority. There’s no method. Your conclusions aren’t transparent. Peter is probably offended by now, so I may as well say that the post modernist project is a vast black hole into which talent and ideas disappear forever.

But there are soft sciences that can speak eloquent, verifiable truths about the subjective experience of actual people. Qualitative methods in discourse analysis are becoming ever more concise and revealing. I think our best hopes lie here, not in brain scans and even less in a philosophical revolt against Socratic method.

>Qualitative methods in discourse analysis are becoming ever more concise and revealing. I think our best hopes lie here, not in brain scans

In the intergenerational field, Terry Leahy’s qualitative work strikes me as carefully structured and richly revealing. Is this the sort of study you have in mind, Sean?

But I wouldn’t rule out an ever more significant contribution from brain scans, and other physiological, especially neurological, studies. Yes, they are perhaps over-hyped right now. It is all too easy to be blinded by the glamour and apparent sophistication of a science that is actually in its babbling infancy, but there is great promise. A hint of that promise is to be seen in the fact that the findings in Ponseti et al., as discussed in the above blog, are only tentative and preliminary: this is the beginning, not the end. The problem with James Cantor’s work on the brain structure of paedophiles was not the work itself but Cantor’s over-selling of the findings, and their supposed implications for public policy, in the media.

Which brings me to a broader question in relation to your phrase “our best hope”. I would agree that work like Leahy’s is “our best hope” for bringing real understanding of intergenerational intimacy to the very few people who have heard of him, but the nature of qualitative research is such that its findings are hard to distil into either “hard facts”, such as brain-scan science can give at least the illusion of delivering, or compelling human stories at the individual level, which probably needs named people on the airwaves and in the social media.

Am I wrong? If so, how do we get from findings stuck in research papers to greater public understanding?

I think there are some differences between fact and perception that generate and sustain prejudice and hostility against minor attracted people. For example, the conflation of paedophilia with child sexual abuse and the assumption that sexual abuse is motivated by sexual attraction to children are widespread, demonstrably false beliefs that make life more difficult for minor attracted people.

I’ve found in my own life that when people are made aware of my my orientation, they almost always revise their beliefs about paedophilia, rather than projecting their existing beliefs onto whatever perception they have of me.

I like the title of uryourstory.org “You Are Your Story”. I think that it helps people understand minor attraction if they can relate it to the lived experience of particular minor attracted people, rather than drawing conclusions from a lot of disconnected and mostly false ‘facts’. This is the value of a qualitative study: rather than tilting at an illusion of objectivity it foregrounds the subjective experience of its participants.

Brain scans etc are very interesting, but so what. What do they actually mean for the owner of the brain? It’s not a simple conclusion to draw.

And yes, Leahy’s “Negotiating Stigma: Approaches to Intergenerational Sex” is a good example.

..and speaking of Goode, her studies would have been excellent if they had only been conducted with more honesty and good faith. I think most who participated felt betrayed by her insistence of impressing her own perspective on their experiences. I guess that’s the inherent risk in coming out of hiding for any of us.

As I said, for me it’s been mostly positive, but then, I’ve not been accused of or discovered to be involved in any sexual activity involving children. For those who are, the experience is mostly negative, I’m sure. But the benefit of a qualitative study is that the subjects can reveal a lot of intimate detail without disclosing their identity. I think this is very valuable.

Touché. My comment was an informal observation. It would be interesting to poll some different populations an see if there is any truth in my claim, or at least the component of it that suggests an underestimation of the sexual harm suffered by children at the hands of adults. It would be more difficult the wilfulness of this underestimating tho.

Let me be clear that I understand that child sexual abuse is overestimated in harm and frequency, and routinely conflated with non abusive sexual behaviors. Probably to a far greater degree.

This is my response to MichaelKennedyLozano’s request of 6 Feb for “info on the history of the pedophile liberation movement”: see skinny thread in comments below, search term “movement”.

As I indicated in a preliminary response, there are a number of scattered sources giving different aspects of this history. I have been most closely involved with the British scene so I will focus on this first.

I covered the origins and early history of the Paedophile Information Exchange (PIE) in my 1980 book Paedophilia: The Radical Case. These are the relevant chapters:

The later history of PIE was written up by my successor as Chair, Steven Adrian Smith (later Freeman) in an appendix to this book by Warren Middelton, who used to be on the PIE executive committee:

Warren Middleton (ed), The Betrayal of Youth: Radical Perspectives on Childhood Sexuality, Intergenerational Sex, and the Social Oppression of Children and Young People (London: CL Publications, 1986).

The book itself is hard to get hold of these days but the appendix in question has been put online by one of our most industrious sworn enemies, Ian Pace, whose assiduous research can be rather useful. I recommend a browse through his site, especially for the many images of original documents. See here:

Tom, the link you provided for Philip Jenkins’ “Intimate Enemies” leads not to it, but to Mathew Thomson’s “Lost Freedom”, which contains a lot of important information as well, and a valuable source… yet it is not the same book.

Sorry about that. In that case I don’t think I have a good link for Jenkins (it can be seen at Amazon easily enough but no link to text) . As for Thomson, I did not intent to mention it because, if I remember rightly, it contains seriously inaccurate information.

“As for Thomson, I did not intent to mention it because, if I remember rightly, it contains seriously inaccurate information.”

Thanks for this clarification, Tom – I just started reading the available parts of this book and was more-or-less ready to trust it, since what I have read already superficially corresponded with my already-existing knowledge about the events of mid-20th century Paed-Lib, and was written with an apparently non-hostile (not friendly, but at least neutral) perspective. Now I will approach it with much more caution.

The reason behind allowing the video to be watched (again…) but not to be discussed (never again!) is for anyone to guess.

It is unpleasant to understand that the largest and the most popular channels of communication and information nowadays are the direct subject to arbitrary, and often incomprehensible, whims of their corporate owners – and, indirectly, to the passions of angry moralistic mobs whose equally arbitrary and incomprehensible demands these owners often follow.

Explorer: “It is unpleasant to understand that the largest and the most popular channels of communication and information nowadays are the direct subject to arbitrary, and often incomprehensible, whims of their corporate owners – and, indirectly, to the passions of angry moralistic mobs whose equally arbitrary and incomprehensible demands these owners often follow.”

Indeed…my second account now closed; Though, if you want to watch anything 18 and over (adults) you have to sign in, can’t fucking do that and as a non-exclusive I do enjoy looking at hot young ladies sometimes. Next account, I must never comment again. Only ‘like’, they can’t sensor you for that.
maybe we could have a competition on who can get suspended from the most websites and forums!

“It is unpleasant to understand that the largest and the most popular channels of communication and information nowadays are the direct subject to arbitrary, and often incomprehensible, whims of their corporate owners – and, indirectly, to the passions of angry moralistic mobs whose equally arbitrary and incomprehensible demands these owners often follow.”

The situation with censorship became even more unpleasant than one realises that there is a third player in the censorship game, more powerful and dangerous than both corporate managers and moralistic mobs – the state and its ruling elite, which was created with, and maintained by, desire for surveillance and punishment. Yet, unpleasantly for state controllers, in the modern Western states their potential to suppress and repress – for example, to censor ideas and images they dislike – is, at least to some extent, restrained by the public institutions and general society. So, these controllers have to find a way to avoid restrictions imposed on them publicly, as they have always did.

And the pretty obvious way of such avoidance is what I can call “outsourcing of censorship”. To be precise, it is a delegation of both justification and implementation of state-desired restriction of the free speech to non-state entities.

The rhetorical justification of free speech rejection is delegated to the moralistic mobs I mentioned above, be they informal and unorganised communities or formally organised as some kind of “child protecting”, “hate speech fighting” etc. non-profits and charities. Such communities and organisations are filled with people who are more than willing to throw away freedom for what they perceive as the Noble Cause, and thus are quite useful for control-obsessed state elites who can nod to them if they ban or restrict liberties: “This is not us who decided such, the People Themselves asked us to do so!” And, unfortunately, some people do ask for oppression, thus playing on the side of the would-be oppressors among the state elites.

The practical implementation of free speech suppression is delegated to info-corporations like Google, Twitter or Facebook, which can (and do) arbitrarily create and even more arbitrarily interpret their rules, and can even violate their own rules outright if they wish to do so. Being more than interested to be on friendly terms with the state bureaucracy, they are quite eager to accept state elites’ censorship intentions and implement them as their own rules (and, if the rules are not enough, simple as rule-less acts, like the Twiiter purges of law-and-rule-abiding yet highly unpopular accounts). Beyond maintaining a productive (for them) connection with the state ruling circles, such actions are also appeasing the repression-demanding moralistic mobs.

So, in the end we have what I may call the Tripartite Vicious Circle of Censorship: the interconnected social mechanism of the free speech suppression which consists of the state bureaucrats (who create the regime of control and persecution which is the basis of their own political existence), moralistic gagging-enthusiasts (who justify such regime rhetorically as serving the supposed Greater Good) and corporate service-providers (who actually implement the demands of the bureaucrats and desires of the moralists).

And the people who are unlucky enough to be outside of the “respectable mainstream” suffer the consequences, And, on the long run, society and culture in general suffer these consequences as well: as history has always, invariably, shown, in the end censorship always leads to suppression of valid and necessary, yet publicly unpopular and reviled, ideas and images – such as the evidence of consensual intergenerational sexual relationship and contacts – while simultaneously encouraging the mutual suspicion, intolerance and hostility between persons and communities, and thus creating a perfect environment for reactionary and authoritarian ideologies, even if, paradoxically, the fight against such ideologies were the initial pretext of censorship – just look at the recent resurgence of neo-Fascism and neo-Nazism, that are surprisingly unrestrained by the apparent censorship of “hatred”, and reinstalling themselves in public sphere from there they were apparently banished for good…

You make a strong point about “outsourcing of censorship”, Explorer, but what exactly is it that “the elite” want and who are they? Do you believe the elite in Russia or Turkey, say, thinks in the same way and wants the same things as the elite in Germany or France? Are the objectives of “the liberal elite” in the US, led until recently by Hillary Clinton, and the present ruling elite, led by Donald Trump, much the same?

If you feel the answer to these questions is “yes” then it sounds like giving up entirely on politics as usually understood. This may be a logical conclusion but is it in fact your conclusion?

I’m an anarchist, Tom, have you forgotten? 😉 Universally condemning ANY form of state power and ALL exalted social groups that possess and enact such power – “the elites”, as I call them – is exactly what we anarchists do!

And anarchism is indeed the ultimate rejection of “politics” in its common sense of competition for the ruling positions within the institutional system of the state. Strictly speaking, anarchism is ANTI-political position in the sense that it wants to abolish the enitre political system (system of ruleship), as well as the whole political (ruling) class that runs it, so people can rule themselves, can create and choose rules for themselves, without the superior rulers standing above them or the rules that forcibly, from above, imposed on them.

I know that here we differ strongly, Tom, and we can agree to disagree here…

Good article, sounds much like the conclusions of Rind et al. With all the hysteria about gate-girls etc, I heard they will be replacing them with kids! I suppose they’ll not be dressed so provocatively though. when discussing them on the radio, someone mentioned football mascot boys, ‘some may think its strange seeing boys holding hands with grown men’.

They were also discussing foster parents on five live, how to make boundries without making the kids feel rejected. it was news to me that foster parents were not allowed to let kids sleep in their ben or even on their knee: they were discussing this as women, you can imagine how the reactions would be intensified when the foster parent is male!
I suppose the logical conclusion will be (thin end of wedge again)! than all parents whether biological or not will be banned from sleeping with their kids etc. most “abuse” is behind closed doors after all.

Tom, I want to inform you, as well anyone else here, about a very interesting – and relevant to this discussion – blog post from Jerry Barnett’s Sex & Censorship blog (remember it, Tom? I once brought it to your attention concerning Milo Yiannopolis, which inspired you to write a blog post about it):

Dr. David J. Ley, about whom the post is written, was brave enough to state publicly that porn is NOT harmful for adolescents, and even has its positive effects. He was invited to a conference on “the treatment” of adolescent “sex offenders”… but in vain, since he first became the target of massive and intense hate-sending online, and then conference organisers censored him fearing the negative publicity and probable attempts to disrupt the conference proceedings if he is allowed to speak.

It appears that even such “moderate” (not pro-intergenrational sex at all!) views are unbearable enough for the New Puritans (New Victorians?) to gag anyone who dares to vocalise them. A sad situation.

After what Tom has said on the blog and in private re Mike Bailey, for sure he is objective and aware of the hypocrisy and hysteria surrounding the issue of inter-generational relationships. I think it’s fair to say he is, as already said, ‘one of the good guys’.

As for Queen Cantor, he is of the most vile of hypocrites. As we know, it was not too far back into the last century that people like him were executed, and unfortunately still are today in some parts of the world. Having had what I now regard to be the misfortune of meeting him in Toronto in 2014, the one thing I remember about him that puzzled me at the time was that he looked through me, that feeling of being observed if like some kind of infected anal gland (thanks to Lensman for that one). Hindsight is a wonderful thing.

It stands to reason that he is employed to spread the lies of the authoritarian nightmare within which we live, so accordingly he could never grow a pair of bollocks large enough to at least be as impartial as the likes of Mr Bailey, simply because he would find himself cast aside and out of a job as quick as one could say ‘Mincing narcissist’.

The fact that Virped have aligned themselves with cretin like this, and the likes of Goode, Grayson and the rest of the CSA industry apologists, sums it up quite accurately I would say.

Thanks makes an amusing pun but I am not so sure, actually. In the circumstances, I thought it was OK to let Ed sound off a bit but it would have been a different matter if JC had turned up here to debate things with us. In that case I would not have allowed anything so personally offensive and in general I am not keen on it. We can all think more clearly when we back off from our initial emotional response and pause to consider.

Believe me, if I ever dealt with Cantor in any discussion of his work, I would be in no way personal, and discuss only his work.

Unfortunately I also have spent enough time around academics/academia to hear many deeply personal ad hominem arguments about … just about everything.

And “mincing narcissist” does perfectly describe Cantor’s presentation in the videos I have seen on youtube. Truly, it’s purely a descriptive reference to a very camp man; it is unfortunate, however, that his ideas and research also are deeply erroneous and morally questionable, not merely because I am an amoral immoralist, so to speak, but because he begins supposedly “objective” research with his moral—and hence his “objectively scientific”—conclusions well in place. What a bad bad boy.

Really? Sounds to me like a put-down of campness as well as narcissism. The latter target seems a good deal more legitimate than the latter, although I too have been guilty of poking fun at JC’s “drama queen” histrionics and “handbag-swinging” tantrums.

>I also have spent enough time around academics/academia to hear many deeply personal ad hominem arguments about … just about everything.

Oh, sure, there are many academics who are no saints, including the greatest minds. I gather Newton was a nasty piece of work!

Maybe I’m just odd, because I really didn’t take it or intend it to be a personal put down. I’ve been around too many very camp guys (gay, bi, and hetero, because “camp” —to me, if not to others—is a description of behaviour, not sexuality) to intend it as an insult or a put down. I would be surprised, actually, if Cantor doesn’t lurk around these forums dealing with his professional work. Well, I hope he does, not only because he would read some good criticism of his work, along with some bad, but because he would read a lot of work which argues for a position he seems to deem (morally and scientifically) to be an illness—of sorts. A mole was once the sign of a witch, and of the right and moral obligation to torture said woman until dead, in order to prove she wasn’t a witch. I’m afraid that Cantor is a contemporary witch hunter, but I’d love to be wrong.

In response to the comments below, I thought it necessary for me to be clear that I have no problem with people who either mince or who are narcissistic. Why would I?

Ok, camp people can be overly so at times, as narcissistic people can be obvious and annoying, but none of us are perfect, least of all me. If I have offended anyone who happens to be either camp and / or narcissistic, my sincere apologies.

As already stated, Queen Cantor is camp, and minces more than a butchers shop or a Mr Kipling cake factory pre Christmas.

He is also narcissistic, although to be fair he does dress well. However, it is not his dress sense that irks me in respect of his narcissism. If he didn’t rely on his ‘science’ to justify his moral assumptions and spoke up about the reality of child sexuality, and the fact a fair proportion of inter-generational relationships are NOT harmful if consent is observed, then I wouldn’t so much have a problem with him. However, he needs to justify his pay check, wardrobe, and lifestyle with his perpetuation of the statutory rape / CSA myth he peddles on behalf of the puritanically authoritative dystopian nightmare.

I would also like to point out that if I have offended anybody with the use of the word ‘Queen’ in this context, I would like to offer my sincere apologies. I have no problem with queens in this context, however royalty is a different matter.

I want to make it very clear if I may, although it may / should be obvious to all here, taking into consideration I am preferentially paedophillic, that I love sexual diversity. The more diverse the better, like a rainbow.

Oh…..and I have no problem with Jewish people either…..

To be fair, I think Tom has got it bang on with regards to Cantor. If he had the balls to come here, for which of course I’m pretty sure there would be an invite, and go toe to toe with the likes of Tom, Peter, Explorer, Libertine, the Warbler, BJ amongst many other notably intelligent and articulate contributors to this blog, I would not say these things simply out of a sense of common respect to all. For sure, Tom would not publish these comments, and I happen to agree.

However, the mincing, narcissistic hypocrite is no more than a castrated lap dog yapping all day long without really saying anything other than ‘I’m alright Jack’.

You certainly are more articulate than I am in respect of The Divine Mr C!

Thank you again. As for debate with the man in question: I really do find it difficult to believe that he has not performed internet searches for hiself, and discovered what Tom, LSM, and many others, have to say about his work, and sometimes himself.

Interesting. Ley’s claim would seem to be amenable to scientific verification (well done him), but are treated as if they were ideological. How ironic!

I suggest that the unscientific (ie, ideological) arguments railed against him be identified as such but otherwise ignored. David Ley has suffered the consequences of a lot of unthinking people taking notice of an opinionated few. Don’t lets feed into that.

If teens had porn, while porn is correlated to low rates of sex offenses, maybe the average age of first “sexual offense” wouldn’t be 14. If you don’t have somewhere to channel your desires into fantasy, you can only channel them to reality. And, considering that age of consent is pretty low in some countries, it baffles me why no porn can be legally consumed until age 18. If it hurt children, they wouldn’t actively look for it. Isn’t average age for first exposure to porn 11, in United States? It’s pretty pointless to forbid. In fact, it’s likely counterproductive.

I avoid spaghetti, with apologies because those who haven’t read it will have to search my name for the first post about this (and Peter Herman’s, which started me). A lot happened while I was getting my beauty sleep!

Tom said:

Setting religion aside, do poetry, drama or any of the imaginative arts have a comparable potential for building credibility? Bearing in mind that they touch the heart in a way that science cannot, and that we are motivated by the emotions and not by value-free objective facts about the world, then I hope that they can contribute. This is also why a moving personal account of an experience, such as a loving relationship, can be massively important.

We all have agreed that the topic of materialism v idealism is not really appropriate for this blog, which I see as a bit of a haven for well thought out writings on sexual attraction to children. But let’s move on to the words quoted above.

If I remember my Bohrs correctly—and I may well be very wrong—he was pointing our that religion and poetry (I would include art generally) deals with matters that simply cannot be dealt with by science. A devout materialist would argue that this is not possible, that science covers all aspects of life, of humanity. And yet science cannot quantify the unquantifiable. And, to the extent that Heisenberg and his uncertainty principle, and the results of the double slit experiments, are correct, we cannot quantify and identify merely by observing, because observing changes the measurement. What this, and many other theories in respect of the quantum world show, is that the so called “objective” results” are based on the non-objective in at least the sense that the foundation of our reality is in continual flux, and may appear entirely different, depending entirely on who is looking at what.

The point of my saying this is not to convince anyone, but to point out that I do not reject science, as such. But I do reject the religion of scientism, and the fervent belief that science tells all, and tells the truth in a way that other endeavours cannot.

This brings me back to the quote from Tom. I would say, without even pausing to think otherwise, that the answer is yes, the imaginative arts (which may or may not include religion—sic—have not only a comparable potential for building plausibility, but perhaps an even stronger one, as the imaginative arts tend not to be so controlled by a narrow, mostly stupid, morality. The morality presented in nearly every scientific paper I have read—I include psychology, of course—has always been simply black: sexual relations of any type with children bad, bad, bad; and white: getting rid of anyone who wants to have sexual relations with children: good, and even better if we can castrate or otherwise stop them.

Morality and religion permeate all science. Remember Georges Lemaître, the Catholic priest and physicist who advanced the first version of the big bang theory, and of whom the Church approved because the theory showed that there had to be some pre-existing something, thus providing scientific proof of the existence of God. As for morality… we all grow with a morality, and we carry it everywhere with us. (In my case, fighting all the time to get rid of it, because….)

It is because of the manner in which religion and morality permeate science (and the rest of our lives, I suppose, sigh) that the imaginative arts can be so useful and important: they give credibility by showing just how deeply subjective the “value-free objective facts of science” happen so often to be.

I don’t have the space to even begin to argue for this here, but I would ask you, Tom, to think about your own work. All understanding of theories and concepts is both personal and creative. (Ok, ok, another reference: the mathematician Michael Polanyi’s, Personal Knowledge, which discusses this aspect of knowledge and science in great detail. Brilliant book.)

Because it is personal and creative, you have brought you very personal history and understanding to the science you read, and the discussions of this science. This makes it more valuable as science, than so much else. But it is the creative, imaginative aspect which you bring to the work which provides this value. This also is the case for others, e.g., Bruce Rind clearly brought creative and personal thought to his work

Now, this doesn’t mean or in any way entail that I think he is a child lover—who cares, anyhow, oh wait—it means something like the following:

By using one’s imagination, anyone can (and many do) imagine what it is like to be naked and hug a naked child, and what it might be like to become aroused during that hug. This is possible in respect of non-“paedophiles” for a few simple reasons, though it is easier to imagine in respect of a pubescent person, I suspect.

[1] All bodies are sensuous, sexual, erotic—pick your preferred term.

[2] Because all bodies are sensuous, sexual, erotic, a sensuous, sexual, erotic response always already is both present and possible. (Apologies for the always already, but it is accurate, and at least I avoided saying, also accurately, that it is always already always already present. Snicker.)

[3] Because our sexual (in the broadest sense, not in the stick a dick into someone sense) response always is possible, in respect of any body, human or non-human, there is not such thing as paedophilia as usually defined and discussed in our culture. Or, with some sarcasm, but truthfully: everyone is a (“potential”) “paedophile”, “homosexual”, and et cetera.

One sensuous child’s body wrapped up in a hug with one sensuous adult’s body… and anything is possible. Especially on desert islands. For years. Alone… Gotta love Hollywood’s avoidance of the obvious, especially when the “child” in the movie is pubescent.

(One part of me suspects that what I have said above is at least partially behind the hysteria about children and sex. Everyone unconsciously recognises the potential for sex with a child, and they fear this in themselves. Something to investigate, perhaps.)

If we take these simple facts, and I do believe they are facts, then the use of imagination and creativity in science and in art will lead to a greater understanding, will bring much that is needed for clarity and credibility. The difficulty is that scientism refuses to accept these things, and in the psychological sciences, they go out of their way to force the imagination out of their writing. (Two full courses in Australian universities are devoted to how to write boring bullshit in a way that shows no imagination or creativity, even if it was there in the first palce.)

Apologies for the length of this, but I did think the comments deserved an adequate reply. Of course the latter part refers to Filip’s comment

I guess the reason is that “pedophilia” does not exist in the way most people believe. Actually “pedophilia” does not exist in reality at all.

“Also, those scientists who have concluded that paedophilia can be considered a sexual orientation are very ready to acknowledge that it may be either exclusive, or preferential, or secondary.”

This sounds as if those scientists know what “pedophilia” is. I doubt that strongly. “Recidivism”-studies typically show no link between a “pedophilia”-“DSM”-diagnosis and “recidivism” (see for example Wilson et al. (2010): Pedophilia: An Evaluation of Diagnostic and Risk Prediction Methods). Strange, isn´t it? I guess the reason is that “pedophilia” does not exist in the way most people believe. Actually “pedophilia” does not exist in reality at all.

In a recent big German study with 8.718 men 3,2 % of these men admitted sexual contacts with minors 11 years and younger or having watched child porn with “actors” 11 years and younger (Dombert et al. (2015): How common is males’ self-reported sexual interest in prepubescent children?). But only 0,1 % of the 8.718 men reported more sexual fantasies with minors 11 years and younger than sexual fantasies with adults. And: According to the mean value of several studies about 65 % of the “sexual abuse” of minors is done by minors (see for example Larsson et al. (2002): Sexual Experiences in Childhood: Young Adults’ Recollections). If one puts these two results together it can be seen that about 99 % of the “sexual abuse” of children has nothing to do with “pedophilic” men (seen as persons with a sexual preference for children).

Think about sport. It is not possible to divide the men of Germany into 1 % sportsmen and 99 % non-sportsmen. This would be totally arbitrary. In the same way it is totally arbitrary to divide the men of Germany into 1 % “pedophilic” and 99 % non-“pedophilic” men. It can be done but is totally arbitrary. Millions of other label-definition-percentage-combinations would also be possible (for example 50 % kind-men with at leats some interest and 50 % non-kind-men with no interest at all).

“Pedophilia” does not exist in reality. “Pedphilia” is a mental construct and probably every human being on earth who knows this word has a different mental construct with that label in his/her head. Yes, the love and the desire for example of Tom for children really exists. His love for children is real. But that does not mean that “pedophilia” exists. It does not.

>Yes, the love and the desire for example of Tom for children really exists. His love for children is real. But that does not mean that “pedophilia” exists. It does not.

This is a semantic point and I am not sure it matters. Whether we use the word “paedophilia” or a longer phrase such as “sexual attraction to children” the important point is how to dispel inaccurate and unhelpful attitudes.

tomocarroll: “This is a semantic point and I am not sure it matters. Whether we use the word “paedophilia” or a longer phrase such as “sexual attraction to children” the important point is how to dispel inaccurate and unhelpful attitudes.”

Tom, I’m not sure if this is purely a semantic point. I mean, I’m sure it is, lol, but the thing I want people to understand when I talk to them about my orientation is that paedophilia is HETEROGENOUS.

I’ve often found myself going to ridiculous lengths to explain that my attraction to children is NOT a fetish, but I’ve come to understand that for some people it is a fetish! Initially I considered that kind of attraction inauthentic, but now I just think of it as different.

I’m no pussy, but I AM a mother hen. Maybe some people have noticed that. I feel sexually attracted to children, sure, but most of all I exhibit these nurturing instincts discussed in the paper reported by Tom’s original post. When children are at risk, I’m like that crazed cow separated from her calf. Maybe that’s because I suffered childhood abuse or maybe (JUST MAYBE) it’s because I’m a ‘paedophile’ (according to one or another of it’s denotements).

So, even the phrase “sexual attraction to children” fails to capture the complexity of this condition. It isn’t a thing, it’s a category.

hi Sean.. was wondering if you might be interested in revisiting (as it were) this notion of ‘a fetish’? It would seem instructive, in light of – but probably much more in the shadow of – all the talk of ‘unequal power relations’ etc etc, to ask if our definition of fetish is not that ‘thing’ which the ‘fetishist’ totally believes, or even accepts, has abiding power over him, or her? Or would you prefer to speak perhaps in terms of some ‘exaggerated focus’, of focus on something whose sheer received significance is quite beyond the ability of a subject to ..to, shall we say, ‘rationally encompass’ at any point?

Which would you say came first? The ‘fetish’ or the ‘fetishee’?

Could our ‘attitude’ toward children be the perpetual ‘preparation for an action’ that never takes place? Because currently there IS no ‘place’ – or scene – that could ever provide context – or agency – for such an actor? Oh god, so much is obvious.. i just wish we could get away from such laborious terms as ‘heterogenous’ et al and invest ourselves more fully in the real everpresent DRAMA of it… of what roles are really open to those, such as we, who fall quite outside of the family sack, when ‘everybody knows’ children are ingloriously, unashamedly mimetic and ‘free’, awaiting only THAT which will direct their nascent desire?

warbling j turpitude: “Which would you say came first? The ‘fetish’ or the ‘fetishee’?”

let’s define ‘fetsh’ as an inanimate object invested with ‘anima’
or ‘soul’. it’s original meaning was something like ‘talisman’ but it has two more specific modern usages.

the first is in the study of ‘animism’, in “primitive’ religions, where it has exactly the meaning i’ve just given it,

the second is in the term ‘sexual fetish’, coined by Havelock Ellis, where it denotes an habitual sexual response to a specific (kind of) object that is not typically involved in sexual signalling. the object may be truly inanimate, such as a shoe, or it may be a body part, such as a foot, or it may actually be a human being, as in the pornographic tropes of ‘nurse’ or ‘nun’.

the key feature of the last case is the dehumanising and objectification of the trope. the personaliry of the nun doesn’t matter, just the external characteristics.

as is their wont, psychiatrists have tended to pathologize fetishism, and it can become fixated and compulsive, but it is a universal component of human sexualty. a porn actor is little more than a fetish.

when i mentioned paedophilia as a kind of fetish, i was referring to the capacity of boys or girls to evoke sexual responses in maps in the absence of any kind of personal relationship. obviously this capacity exists in the object of erotic interest in any orientation, and its a question of degree as to how much of a persons sexuality is expressed impersonally and how much in personal relationships.

because it is so difficult for maps to form relationships with living, breathing child persons, it becomes an easy and satisfying alternative to emphasize the role of ‘child fetishes’ in sexual life, such as the usual things that might aid in masturbation.

the inevitable consequence of this is that paedophilia begins to be seen as NOTHING BUT a fetish, and is denigrated for being so

in no way do i elevate myself above this fetishizing, and i consider it a natural aspect of sexuality, but i first developed a consciousness of my paedophilia through friendships with and falling in love with children.

this was so distinct from the genital aspect of sexual fantasy and masturbation that there is virtually no crossover. unlike my fantasies, my relationships with kids are platonic and really very sweet and innocent.

so i get annoyed when people interpret my paedophilia as nothing but a child fetish. for me, relationships are the most important thing, not bodies or glimpses of panty.

i appreciated the comprehensivity of this reply very much (as did I Tom’s earlier responses to me, i should assuredly mention!) – and can hardly find much to quibble with it – but I am most curious to know more about what you’d say ‘happens’ to the ‘thing’ that has heretofore and forever energized such masturbatory energies when one gets around to actually befriending a small being.. ..in the flesh? (heh..)

You write “this was so distinct from the genital aspect of sexual fantasy and masturbation that there is virtually no crossover. Unlike my fantasies, my relationships with kids are platonic and really very sweet and innocent.”

Would it be true to say though that the very moment the diminutive one acted towards you in a genuinely suggestive manner, the sexual would return at a gallop?

It just seems to me Sean that, however hard you might try to profess/confess ‘pro-contact’ (such an unfortunate term!) and not virped, one’s very invocation of the Platonic inevitably seems to make the dichotomous break out all over… no?

Perhaps I may put it *this* way – if by some miraculous intervention the overcast of stigma were to lift tomorrow , would you and your ..chums then be (euphemism ahead) ‘reunited with your muladhara chakras’ in a mutually erotic instant…? Or what……?

Thank you for these great thoughts warbling! Because of the unfortunate thread formatting of Tom’s wordpress configuration (the one character line break) I’m going to expand on fetishism in a top level post (hope that’s ok Tom).

That will take me a day or so, because I’m really struggling to get my ideas down coherently, but I have a couple of comments I want to make immediately.

The first is that I have never claimed to be ‘pro-contact’. I distinguish myself from VP on the basis that I’m not ‘anti-contact” either. I’m determinedly agnostic on this question, and I reserve the right to fence sit because the issue has no practical impact on my life, which does not include sexual conduct with children, and because I really don’t know what is best for children.

Perhaps if intergenerational intimacy were socially acceptable and free from emotional risk, then perhaps, but as things stand, I simply don’t have the time or energy to speculate. But thank you Tom for putting the minority position so cogently! I sincerely admire your acumen and commitment.

The second comment I want to make is that I should have said “a porn actor is little more than a fetish object”. That would have better illustrated my understanding, which is as idiosyncratic as it is paradoxical. To follow, you need to understand that I’m a scientist and a materialist, but also an animist. My animism is founded on the observation that other people are objects, just hunks of meat with some bones and viscera. What makes them ‘people’ is either of two things: love, like I love my mum, or empathy, which is a kind of mirroring of another flesh-lump-person-thing, and an understanding that other flesh-lump-person-things are similar to me, so perhaps have similar internal states. Investing other flesh-lump-person-things with the capacity to contain these internal states is a kind of animism, so there it is.

As promised, I’ll expand on this, wrt sexual fetishism, in another post.

>I’m going to expand on fetishism in a top level post (hope that’s ok Tom).

Yes, Sean, that’s fine.

Bizarrely, I am the only person who doesn’t notice (or not immediately) the threads getting very thin because the first thing I see is the post at full page width, either in my email inbox or I can read it at the WordPress administrator’s page for the blog. It is only when I press the Approve button that the software publishes the post and automatically sets a width.

Occasionally, I will find a moment later on to glance through the published comments. Sometimes I will find one of my own as a horrifyingly anorexic single-word string and will wonder whether anyone has bothered to read it. However, by the time a thread is down to, well, a bare single thread, it is probably only being read by the person to whom the reply is being made, and that person will probably either take the trouble to read the thin thread on-screen or cut and past it into a wide page.

So I hope not too much harm is done. In any event, the alternative formats in WordPress are no better.

Has anyone got to the bottom of the.. the line-break disaster? It infects any number of blogs I can think of, and as you say surely discourages the composer of ready-to-rock argument and prose! I do thank you for this response Sean, but will hold off for the moment in case I too, end up strung out down the page like a broken necklace of beads! I’ll just say that ‘for me’ the categories of ‘materialism’ and ‘animism’ and so on are notoriously insufficient, as I think it plainly obvious that what relieves us of our potential ‘objecthood’ at all times is the terrible reality that we are, every one of us, *sign-bearing* creatures, charged at every second of our lives with if not the sacred and/or the profane themselves, their closest cousin the *significant*! Why, we should all realize by now that even “insignificance” is significant in some way, for how could it possibly NOT BE?

Let me return to the article that Peter shared with us – the Anterior Insula one. I find it to be an excellent example of what I find very disturbing. First of all, from a purely scientific point of view, what does this research demonstrate? Well the central finding is that pedophilia men seem to be more nurturing than other men. One could, of course, conclude from this that such men might make excellent teachers and caregivers in a variety of settings, and that it’s a nice thing to have them mixed into the gene pool. However this is not the conclusion of this article. The conclusion of this article is that this knowledge might help us develop “new options for the pharmacological treatment of pedophilia child sexual offenders…” This pharmacological cure would represent a radical alteration of a person’s pattern of desire, and it would undoubtedly be forced upon “the offender” by society. Some would say it would be an alteration of his very being. But according to the modern view of things he has no being. He has only brain chemistry. And if that is deemed unhealthy by the medical technicians then it should be altered.
I believe it is psychosocial engineers (technicians) speaking the language of science from whom we have the most to fear. Even more than from the evangelicals and the feminists. I belabor this point because I think we may not be understanding the degree to which the value orientations and political agendas of mainstream society are welded to science as it is currently practiced in our society. I use the term “welded” to emphasize a connection between two things that has been made virtually inseparable. The welding can be traced by paying attention to the kind of language that is used. This is a battle that Bruce Rind fought in his objection to the term “child sexual abuse” or “CSA” rather than a value neutral term such as child/adult sexual contact. The CSA term, he pointed out, presupposes the outcome that the research is supposed to discover. He was obviously right, but lost the battle because his view was not the popular one with the powers that be.

Are we perhaps beginning to talk past each other? Is there anything in what I said that contradicts anything you are now saying? I am hard pressed to find anything. Indeed, I myself pointed out in an earlier post the very point from the conclusion to Ponseti et al that you now reiterate.

Science findings have potential to take us forward but of course it will not happen while values remain unchanged, and that depends on more happening in society than science alone. As I say, there needs to be (and as Peter Herman pointed out) an emotional input: it is necessary to tell different stories, not just the victim narrative.

One way is through telling stories about positively experienced relationships, such as Titus Rivas and Marshall Burns have done with their compilations. A single story told at the right time can capture the public imagination, which is the larger part of the battle. But such stories have more traction in public policy when they come to be seen as more than just “anecdotes”, and when they are backed by rigorously researched evidence from various angles, as with the Finnish and Danish research. So, as I say, it’s not a case of either/or but of both/and: good narratives and good science can be mutually reinforcing.

My point about a single story told “at the right time” of course raises more questions than it answers, especially along the lines of how we can begin to get even near such a point given that at present we seem a million miles away and drifting further beyond reach, not closer.

In the meantime, it is a great deal easier to say what won’t work than what will. What would you suggest with regard to the latter?

Are you suggesting that religion and poetry are somehow solutions in themselves? From where I stand it is easier to see both as offering little or nothing more than sources of consolation in a difficult world – a way of accepting things as they are rather than making a difference. This may, I suppose, be the best be can do and we should simply be stoical. This is not what I think, but perhaps you do?

To the extent that I have been “talking past you,” I apologize. There is truth in what you say. On most points for the most part we agree. Especially I agree with you (and with Peter) about good science and good narratives re-enforcing each other. I do admire your hanging in their with Sexnet. (I also admire Baily for telling it like it is.) So what is driving me to be so strident in my manner of communicating?Let me try to explain in a brief paragraph.
I can’t accept things as they are any more than you can. But I think I am more hopeless than you are. I am not sure you realize just how corrupted all of the social sciences have become. When, for example, psychology backpedaled out of it’s support of the Rind studies for political reasons, it ceased being a science and chose to become propaganda. Every psychologist now knows exactly what range of hypotheses can be seriously explored. The truth of things, and our salvation, is not within any of the accepted ones.
And as far as narrative is concerned, major publishers know what can and what cannot be published.
If my view is too bleak, and there are chinks in the wall that can be taken advantage of, I will be happy to see them. Somehow we need a more aggressive strategy. But I am at a loss as to what it should be.

although i hesitate to identify science, the method, with science, the social construct., and even less inclined to identify it with technocracy.

it is tehnocratic tomfoolery and profit that have saturated our world wirh surveillance devices, in the total absence of any evidence their good outweighs their harm. what little science has been done on this clearly suggests it doesn’t.

it is quite possible to conduct science that challenges social prejudices and infkuences values. kinsey is one example, but there are many others. primatologists diane fossey and jane goodall had a profound influence, not just in their fields but on the practice of science. and they did this in dirct opposition to the scientific establishment.

that people, even paedophiles, are not reducible to their neural anatomy is not a statement of radical humanism, its a fact that ‘scientists’ ignore at their peril.

science is democratic. anyone can do it. if it’s done well, it can have an impact, despite th outrage of ‘decent people’ and a few self serving stuffed shirts.

jedson303: “what does this research demonstrate? Well the central finding is that pedophilia men seem to be more nurturing than other men. …. The conclusion of this article is that this knowledge might help us develop “new options for the pharmacological treatment of pedophilia child sexual offenders…”

Yeah but, science isn’t about ‘conclusions’. This is research. It might even be good research. The data is the thing. The interpretation is the ‘after party’, when science goes out the back for a smoke.

Sure, the design of the investigation is tailored to some assumption or hypothesis or other, but the outcome is what it is. Those numbers can be held up for scrutiny in any context. That’s meta-analysis.

The data is supposed to be separate from the value laden technology to which it might be put. Yes. That it the ideal. But where do you see that ideal in practice? Practice is that the science is welded to the technology by the language that is used to frame the research. I mean WELDED. You and I may tease out the data and use it in another way, but that is not what is in the journals.

I still think about this recent blog of yours, Tom… And I wonder how used we are to the bad news, to the situations of children of child-lovers that have a tendency to move from bad to worse, since the flames of moralistic hysteria that should have been doused for good back in the 1990s, after the miserable fall of the Satanic Panic, are still raging. The positive information that you have brought here is a pleasant difference.

I also can only adore the courage of the people who still dare to ask people about their own evaluation of their experience, not assume that it must be compulsory and damaging by definition. I was afraid that such research is a phenomenon of the past – the last study of such kind I knew was Ulrich et al. successful replication of Rind et al. from 2006 – and nowadays nobody would be both willful and open-minded enough to try:

Over the last few decades I have conducted a similar survey of about 264 children. I had similar but somewhat improved results. Approximately .005% felt that the relationship was abusive or regretted it; the rest asked me for pocket money until they were 40 years old.

O’Carroll, would it all be possible for you to produce that little impromptu essay given by Bailey? I know that Bailey has always been among the more adventurous with how he approaches this topic, so I’m excited to hear from him.

>O’Carroll, would it all be possible for you to produce that little impromptu essay given by Bailey?

Sure, it would be possible if you ask nicely. But what’s with the “O’Carroll” style? People who use just surnames these days usually do so only in a hostile context. Your message does not seem hostile, though, so I am getting cognitive dissonance here.

Is this like George W Bush when he yelled out “Yo, Blair!” as a greeting to the UK prime minister of the day? The British press at first thought he was being contemptuous but eventually decided it must be a friendly frat boy thing.

My caution, BTW, is in large part down to a feeling that I need to be careful in what I reveal about Sexnet discussions in general. It’s Mike Bailey’s forum so the (entirely unwritten) rules are his. He has never said that posts should be considered confidential but I would hesitate to publish without seeking permission anything sensitive or controversial that some people – a newbie, for instance, who may not know the ropes – might say there. Mike is not in that category but there are plenty of folks ready to pounce on anything he says to use against him, not least because his book The Man Who Would Be Queen attracted a lot of hostility in some quarters.

Accordingly, it would be helpful to have some understanding of the reason for your interest in his “adventurous” views. I would be hesitant to release information if I knew it was just going to be used as ammunition for a drive-by character assassination bid.

Brain research is certainly fascinating as is the exploration of the cosmos or any other area of curiosity in the human spirit. More and more, brain research has shown human behavior to be wholly determined by the brain we are born with and the external stimuli that affect that organ. As Stephen Pinker in his book “The Blank Slate” points out, there is no ghost in the machine.
But looking for causes of pedophilia as a means of curing or curbing it should be a non starter. Of course, the research Sugarboy cites is agnostic about this, but given current societal attitudes, one cannot but fear what the control freaks may do with such neutral research.
Even if true according to the research, the idea that for males pedophilia is related to a nurturing instinct would probably only gain sympathy from a very small set of women. Unfortunately, the nurturing instinct in males will be seen as weakness, and instead of inspiring admiration will invite contempt and revulsion. Being “kind” is fine if it is appreciated, but it brings respect only if accompanied with toughness.

Peter is absolutely right. This research itself is objective and will ultimately stand or fall by whether it turns out to be factually accurate, but the use to which the findings are put is another matter entirely. As with other research in the field, those who have been funded to do the work have only been given the money because it is hoped it will lead to solving the “problem” of paedophilia.

This motivation is to be seen in what the authors say in their discussion of the findings:

…given that human females’ response to infant faces is modulated by female sex hormones (Sprengelmeyer et al., 2009) and pituitary hormones (Strathearn et al., 2009; Gregory et al., 2015), it appears possible that pedophiles’ responses to infant features are mediated by these agents as well. In this case, new options for the pharmacological treatment of pedophilic child sex offenders would arise.

[My emphasis]

These scientists are not working towards the acceptance of paedophilia but its elimination. Science alone will not see kindness accorded proper recognition for its positive potential or kind people being treated with respect and acceptance. That is something for which we must work.

Science, in my view, will eventually provide a necessary but not sufficient condition for our liberation.

Yes, I agree. But I think it goes even deeper than this. “Science” is a social process that is grounded in both the metaphysical and the value assumptions of the our culture. It has provided us with profound insights into some aspects of reality. It also hides other aspects of reality. It ALWAYS operates within assumptions that it cannot verify. This happens on different levels. There are two de rigueur a priori assumptions regarding intergenerational attraction that are part and parcel of almost all of the “science” done in this field: 1. A clear cut behavior syndrome exists called “pedophilia” that some people have and others don’t. 2. It is an illness.
What I am talking about here is something over and above out and out scientific fraud, such as one regularly sees, say, with pharmaceutical corporations.

Science has no choice but to start from the cultures in which it is practised, and their particular imaginings of what people and nature are like. We can only start a journey from where we happen to be, and that applies to journeys of intellectual discovery as much as to physical ones.

So, yes, there have to be a priori assumptions that could turn out to be wrong and often do. However, the whole point of the scientific method is that assumptions can be overturned if it can be shown that the evidence does not support them. The research I mentioned by Jorge Ponseti and his team, for instance, could (if confirmed through further research) overthrow the assumption that adults with a sexual attraction to children typically or always lack empathy and concern for them.

Thus science, in the strict sense, has no “de rigueur” assumptions. But “science” in a looser sense does, if we include all the texts published in peer-reviewed academic and quasi-academic professional publications, with the latter including legal and medical publications, plus a wide range of philosophical, literary etc discourses that range from important scholarship to pseudoscientific trash, which may be either ideology masquerading as science or snake-oil salesmanship.

The CSA industry is, for sure, massively bedevilled with pseudoscience, and much of it passes muster through peer review.

However, taking the two “de rigueur” assumptions you have named, it is easy to demonstrate that they so not go unquestioned within science.

Let’s take the first of them:

>1. A clear cut behavior syndrome exists called “pedophilia” that some people have and others don’t.

Two things are conflated here that scientists working in the field precisely do not conflate: they are careful to consider sexual attraction separately from sexual behaviour. They have hypothesised, but not been dogmatic about, the possibility that paedophilia can be considered a distinct sexual orientation. The fact that this was still considered an open question until recently is indicated by Michael Seto’s 2012 paper titled “Is pedophilia a sexual orientation?”:https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10508-011-9882-6
Also, those scientists who have concluded that paedophilia can be considered a sexual orientation are very ready to acknowledge that it may be either exclusive, or preferential, or secondary. These may be taxonomically distinct from each other or be part of a continuum. Exploring such possibilities is what science is all about, not making prior declarations and sticking to them theologically.

Ironically, those who have been dogmatic, and have held immovably to “de rigueur” assumptions, have been those elements of the CSA industry who have insisted, and who continue to insist, that paedophilia in not a sexual orientation. Instead, they say, it is primarily an expression of the abuse of power.

And now the second alleged assumption:

>2. It is an illness.

Again, there are large elements of the CSA industry who are firmly against this view. In cahoots with the media they tend to use the word “paedophile” as a demonising synonym of “sex offender against children”. They see it not as a medical condition but as a social phenomenon: an abuse of (usually male) power.

The pathologisers, who constitute the therapy-based side of the CSA industry, of course take a different view. At its most elaborated level, the world of formal psychiatry, these are the people behind the very unscientific so-called “bible” of psychiatry in the US, the DSM. This “bible” has a history as messy and controversial as its religious counterpart. Its descriptions of mental conditions has always been primarily grounded in symptoms, not scientific investigation. And increasingly it has come to be driven by commercial considerations: big pharma (which you rightly mention) pushing drugs to address so-called symptoms of bogus conditions:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/health/10359105/Dozens-of-mental-disorders-dont-exist.html

Where DSM and paedophilia are concerned, science has been in a difficult position. It would be a good thing if DSM could be made more scientific but what gets published in that particular volume looks hopelessly political, despite the best efforts of some scientists.

>>>> As Stephen Pinker in his book “The Blank Slate” points out, there is no ghost in the machine.

This statement of belief (and that is all that it is) completely invalidates Pinker’s views for many, e.g., those whose beliefs are that there is a ghost in the machine.

Moreover, it is a completely materialist point of view. This is fine for materialists, but not so for idealists, such as myself, who would claim that the physical world is no more than a blot of imagination in the mind that is …

I realise that I am surrounded by materialists (and moralists) on this particular web site, but I could not let that blatant scientism pass. (Yes, and you also, Tom, when you say that Peter is absolutely right.)

Wasn’t it Neils Bohr who said something to the effect that religion and poetry dealt with those areas that science would not?

And then there is the physicist Tom Campbell, and his “big toe”. Campbell presents a view in radical opposition to the somewhat jejune acceptance of Pinker and all those scientists who sail blindly on in their scientism. (And then there’s the High Priest of the religion of scientism: Dawkins… ’nuff said.) Look up Campbell’s lectures on youtube, if interested, but be prepared for some heavy going with the science.

Why, O why did I say all this? Partially because I think scientism is wrong. Not only is there a ghost in the machine, but the ghost is the machine.

But I also said it because a science is a human invention; it is no more objective than the pain I feel when I stub my big toe on the shores of scientism.

And I shall say no mroe, though I am tempted to include the Kabbalistic Cross, just for the cheek value. ( Ateh… Malkuth … and so on.)

>This is fine for materialists, but not so for idealists, such as myself

I don’t think the issue is whether you are right or not. It is more a matter of whether many people are persuaded. Given that not many people are, I feel that the heretical objectives of this particular forum in connection with sexuality are best advanced within a discourse ( a nakedly majoritarian, hegemonic, one for sure) that accepts the reality of the material world. Within that acceptance one may be strictly materialist, or religious, but it seems possible to discuss issues of sexuality and ethics without removing every possible foundation on which to advance points of agreement. With idealism, I’m not so sure.

What I do feel fairly sure of, though, is that most visitors to this site will feel we are getting a bit off topic.

“We are getting a bit off topic…”
Yes and no. If we pursued this issue it might sink us in a morass of confusion. So probably it is not a wise thing to do. But to reflect on what science is – on what it can and cannot do, and on how science is done in our culture – is actually quite relevant. So it’s a conundrum. What to do? Let me make a suggestion.
With bjuirhead, I am not a materialist. This puts me (and him) at odds with the mainstream as much as does our position on intergenerational love. Western science is solidly grounded in materialism. Materialism is not something science discovered. It is it’s metaphysical a priori assumption that dates back, so far as I can tell, at least to Sir Francis Bacon. Whether science must be grounded in materialism is, I think, a terribly interesting question, but is probably beyond the scope of this discussion group.
So, accepting western science on its own grounds, in terms of it’s own self-understanding, what might be relevant to our discussion? What about this proposition:
Science, at least on the levels of biology, psychology, and sociology, has been usurped by the political/economic mainstream, and as a consequence it regularly and normally functions a manner that is in violation of its own tenants.
To illustrate my point here I would simply refer to your very accurate description of the DSM xxx. (All editions). In this manual, in a hopelessly confused manner, politics, economics, ethics and maybe a small bit of science are all mishmashed together. The primary functions of the manual are to appease the major powers in society and to facilitate billing for various “mental health” services.
Perhaps if bjuirhead and I agree to (mostly) leave the larger philosophical issues about science alone, it is not getting off topic to discuss scientific practice. I think it is one of the two or three primary reasons we cannot make any headway.

>I think it is one of the two or three primary reasons we cannot make any headway.

Well, as I said in my earlier post, I don’t think the problem lies with scientific practice. The problem is unscientific practice when it masquerades as scientific. Put succinctly, it is Ponseti et al., (or Rind et al.) and similar versus DSM and similar.

To the extent that society can bring itself to pay attention to the former (studies which I expect to grow in number and credibility over time as new findings advance the field and early findings are confirmed and strengthened by further evidence), it will be possible to make headway.

Setting religion aside, do poetry, drama or any of the imaginative arts have a comparable potential for building credibility? Bearing in mind that they touch the heart in a way that science cannot, and that we are motivated by the emotions and not by value-free objective facts about the world, then I hope that they can contribute. This is also why a moving personal account of an experience, such as a loving relationship, can be massively important.

However, I think it helps if we regard subjective and objective approaches as twin tools rather than setting them against each other. The subjective/objective divide is probably a false binary anyway, an illusion produced by our cognitive style, although, like so many ultimately dubious concepts, it has its uses.

Here I’m with you, BJ – I’m a full-blown Idealist as well. Yet here, on Tom’s blog, the topic of mind-versus-matter is secondary – or probably even tretiary – to its main purpose (as for the secondary one, the other area of my interest – anti-psychiatry / critical psychiatry – will pass).

However, I still often fail to the temptation to include my pro-immateriality, pro-parapsychology views here, since other commenters are eager to state their own hardcore materialism.

Interestingly, I noted that pro-intergenrational sexuality people tend to be either materialists / skeptics (Amos Yee, Christian etc.) or immaterialists / paranormalists (T. Rivas, Dissident etc.). Tom is a rare exception; he apparently stands somewhere in the middle (don’t you, Tom?). Good for him, since someone has to be an intermediary between us!

Anyway, I’ve always found it positively fascinating that when pressed, many of the same people who condemn adult -child sex on paper will sheepishly concede that the harmful effects of “consensual” sexual intimacy are not immediately known. I’ve read quotes from Bailey and Seto to that end, and it’d be great to know if that opinion on intergenerational coupling is particularly widespread among other experts in the field.

Men used to, back in the day when gentlemen were gentlemen and ladies were ladies. That had pretty much died out by about the 1960s except perhaps in the elite schools and other high-end all-male institutions. These days we Brits tend to be quite informal but on first name terms not last.

>…many of the same people who condemn adult -child sex on paper will sheepishly concede that the harmful effects of “consensual” sexual intimacy are not immediately known. I’ve read quotes from Bailey and Seto to that end, and it’d be great to know if that opinion on intergenerational coupling is particularly widespread among other experts in the field.

Very few of them are outspoken on the subject. In fact beyond Bailey, plus Bruce Rind and his team, I am struggling to name names among the psychologists. Sociology has traditionally been more open-minded and less judgemental but even there it has gone all too quiet in recent years. It seems the only part of academia where “thinking the unthinkable” is not yet a capital offence is philosophy.

These days, though, all the kudos goes to science. The status of philosophers is for the most part on a par with that of window cleaners and supermarket check-out staff. Their opinions are simply ignored.

Anyway, you asked about Bailey’s “little impromptu essay”. I said there were four paragraphs. Here they are, along with an introductory sentence:

However, just as Eisenhower warned us about the military industrial complex (despite being an old soldier), it is worth considering analogous aspects of the childhood sexual abuse industry.

First, many people owe their livelihoods to the childhood sexual abuse industry. I’m glad that many of these people have jobs in that industry (but am sorry that others do). Although it may be impolite to notice, it is blind not to notice this fact.

Second, government funding for research on childhood sexual abuse is extraordinarily biased towards searching for harm. Can anyone imagine a grant being funded in North America that aimed to show that many children who’d had sex with adults found the experience either neutral or positive, and to understand why (perhaps because they were not iatrogenically harmed by their involvement with the judicial system)? It’s not just government funding, it’s hiring of academics. I can’t imagine my own university hiring someone studying child-adult sex who is not focusing on harm and prevention. Bruce Rind never got a tenure track job, despite quite excellent work. Another person (whose permission I haven’t asked so won’t name him) told me that his research on child-adult sex has essentially barred him from getting a job.

Third, and related to #2, bias is such that mediocre-to-bad research purporting to show harmfulness of child-adult sex gets published fairly easily. Much better research showing the opposite has been condemned by the US Congress.

Fourth, the childhood sexual abuse industry includes a range of positions, but going outside that range is perilous to those funded by the industry. For example, I did not see much agreement with Rind’s meta-analysis published by those clearly in the industry, despite the fact that it was excellent. (The “rebuttals” published in Psychological Bulletin were poor.) People in non-tenured jobs (with whom I sympathize if they are conducting research or even treatment in controversial areas) would risk their livelihoods speaking out in certain ways, such as “Hey we’re being hysterical about childhood sexual abuse. Sometimes kids are not harmed until the authorities step in.” Or “We should stop criminalizing mere possession of child pornography, or we should at least vastly reduce the penalties.” This creates a ratchet effect towards increased punishment and alarm.

Truly Bailey is a brave man. I never thought I’d live to see the day anyone in psychology admitted that maybe the extreme black and white dichotomy we live under isn’t all there is to it. I’m a little disappointed; I could’ve sworn Seto made a neutral remark once.

What does Cantor think? I mean, what does he really think? Is he squarely against the notion of our emancipation, or is he at least amenable to reason on the subject?

It’s truly surprising (and concerning) that out of 300 mental health professionals, only one is willing to give such a nuanced and unabashedly straightforward opinion. Hopefully, that will all begin to change when I graduate from university with a doctorate some 5 years from now.

>I’m a little disappointed; I could’ve sworn Seto made a neutral remark once.

Seto is OK. In a footnote (not enough but it is something) of his book on paedophilia he admitted that “child sexual abuse” is not a scientific concept, but then he proceeded to use the term throughout the rest of the volume! As indeed I did myself in my latest blog, because it is hard to escape even when one is trying to be more positive than the expression readily permits. Also, he did on one occasion on Sexnet commend my contribution (i.e. my general input over some years) to the forum.

The silence of many among the 300+ (nearer 400 now, I susect) is largely down to sheer self-preservation, I would think. Most of them are research academics of various kinds rather than “mental health professionals”, BTW. Yes, the work of many among them tends to have mental health implications down the line but their research is often quite remote from this e.g. there are anthropologists studying tribes up the Amazon, folks studying sex in birds, fishes, etc, geneticists, reproductive biologists, neuroscientists, you name it.

>Hopefully, that will all begin to change when I graduate from university with a doctorate some 5 years from now.

Good luck with that! In the meantime, and probably afterwards, I guess you too will need to be very cautious in what you say publicly if you are going to have any sort of career.

You’d think if I were intelligent I would keep my mouth shut about my sexuality, but in reality, one of my motivating factors in choosing my career (counseling psychology) is down to the fact that I too am minor-attracted, and I’d love to work in a setting where I could be of immediate use to our people in a therapeutic way which is sorely wanting today.

Also, I’m unabashedly open (or more so than most are) about my orientation. Where ever I go online, I use my actual name and I’m never shy about what I am. Honestly, I can’t bear the thought of having to live a double life, hiding my innermost self from everyone around me forever and ever. I’d go absolutely mad after a while, you know.

Maybe the unapologetic way in which I carry myself here will result in me deeply regretting my brazen attitude, but right now I find myself looking down the barrel of my life and wondering if I’ll spend the next 50 years of my life living a second class citizen, or if I’ll ever be free of the hatred and bigotry which currently ensnares us.

If it’s any help, I do not regret being openly myself in the way you propose for yourself. It is hazardous, certainly; it may impact on your career as it has done mine.

But living a life of denial and self-misrepresentation is hazardous too. It actually kills people through depression and suicide. Being determined to have one’s say, on the other hand, and refusing to internalise the low valuation others seek to impose, can be quite therapeutic and even liberating in itself. I don’t think it’s just pure luck that I happen to be in well above average physical health for my age (72): just being oneself gives a sense of well-being that contributes to staying fit.

So I will very happily toast your “brazen attitude” and wish you well. There may be mishaps but in the long term I think there is every chance you will be just fine!

I know your story; I know about PIE and the advocacy work you did there. Goodness gracious, how I weep when I think of all the wasted potential there. How much the world would’ve changed if you and the old gang had succeeded in transforming how society viewed childhood sexuality and, more pointedly, how they interpret physical and emotional intimacy with them. It’s all so tragic when you stop and reflect on it all, really. First, they get you on bogus immorality charges, then everything goes to hell.

Do you have any info on the history of the pedophile liberation movement? I’ve been meaning to broaden my understanding of it all. I’d be nice to get a few scholastic sources from someone who experienced all that suffering and struggle firsthand. You just don’t get that everyday, you know.

I know you probably get this all the time from the groupies around here who hang on your every utterance, but you’re a damn hero, O’Carroll. I mean that, too. You fought for my freedom before I was even born, and even though you failed, you’ve left an inspirational impact on me and every other young, proud pedophile out there. To survive nearly four decades of intense, recurrent pedophobia and come out intact is no less than amazing.

Hopefully, I can make you (and everyone else who fought for liberation back then) proud in continuing the struggle in getting the world to comprehend our sexuality in a positive way and without unjust suspicion.

Don’t bank on it. I went a bit mad with the coming out thing. It’s probably best done with a bit of discretion: be open with people where you reasonably can, but not when it would clearly be reckless.

>Do you have any info on the history of the pedophile liberation movement? I’ve been meaning to broaden my understanding of it all. I’d be nice to get a few scholastic sources from someone who experienced all that suffering and struggle firsthand. You just don’t get that everyday, you know.

There are essays and book chapters dotted here and there. Give me a bit of time, I’ll see if I can dig out a few of them. If anyone else here knows of good sources, please speak up.

>I know you probably get this all the time from the groupies around here who hang on your every utterance

Don’t you mean “want to hang me for every utterance”? I definitely don’t get a free pass when opinions are at odds with my own!

>Hopefully, I can make you (and everyone else who fought for liberation back then) proud in continuing the struggle in getting the world to comprehend our sexuality in a positive way and without unjust suspicion.

I am delighted you have that ambition, and many thanks very much for your appreciative words.

If they took science seriously, they would not call “children” adolescents.

Any primitive Indian or tribe knows that adolescents are not children. Science confirms this. Puberty is responsible for adult sexuality. Our species enters puberty to reproduce itself. That is, adolescence is part of adulthood, not childhood.

The article seems to indicate that homosexuality is probably not influenced by genes but more likely by the environment in the womb during gestation. This is probably true as well for “pedophilia”.

The article also makes the point that male and female brains are profoundly different. This goes against the current politically correct idea that the only differences are in external sexual attributes with all other differences culturally influenced. Of course, accepting fundamental differences between the sexes does not imply superiority of one over the other. Let’s hope that we will eventually evolve a human society where such benign differences as attraction to minors is seen as the asset it actually is.

Good for Mike Baily. But especially good for you for hanging in there with Sexnet.
Of course the stats support what we have been saying all along. But I find the difference between the reaction of boys and girls interesting. This is a consistent finding. (I can find you some citations on this if you want.) Girls report significantly less happiness, and more problems, with the experiences. I don’t know of any data that clarifies why this it true. Two main possibilities come to mind. One, girls are more likely to have something forced on them. (Something that is fairly rare for boys.) or Two, there may be psychological (whether from genetic or cultural sources) differences that cause the variation.
Is is possible that at least a part of the debate with feminists is that neither they nor we take this difference into account?

It should be noted that the rate of the girls’ positive responses (26%) in Finnish study was still more than twice higher than in the Rind et al. meta-analysis (there, positive reactions of girls were reported only at 11% level).

Given that the rate of boys’ positive memories has also almost doubled in the Finnish study (71% against 37% in Rind et al.), I tend to think that the results reflect the more sex-positive and body-accepting (as far as I know) culture of Scandinavian countries, compared to the more puritanical Anglophone ones.

Yet, it is still a Western culture, and therefore girls are still much more intensely and pervasively indoctrinated in sex-shame and body-anxiety than boys are.

i think the results would be different if they were asking 7 year old girls. 12 year old girls definitely are indoctrinated with both anti-sexual social attitudes which apply unevenly toward girls and boys, as well as with feminist ideas of “consent”.

anyone who has spent lots of time around young girls as an adult in non-parental circumstance knows that 11-12 is a common age when girls transform from “free and unencumbered thinking” to “socially indoctrinated rules follower”.

a 12 year old girl gets convinced that her value is enhanced by being a virginal, pure, innocent flower and that being interested and proactive in sexual matters would make her a slut.

a 12 year old boy is convinced that real men are ladies men that have extensive sexual experience and that sexual conquests makes him more valuable. I have no idea what the effects of gay versus straight adult experiences would be, I was never interested in either men or women, but generally I think it is safe to say that boys receive much more sex positive social conditioning.

Girls also are hit with the feminist idea of consent, that even if one party really really wants to say yes and does, her consent is not real if there is a “power imbalance”

and that conditioning increases year by year, if you came back and asked the same girls in 10 years I bet even fewer would have a positive opinion of their experience.

i do wonder however, how many girls who had really positive experiences may have not admitted to them, because even though they were promised anonymity they may have still feared somehow their lovers could be endangered if they admitted it.

Much of it comes down to this, Jos, which was demonstrated by the Rind Report when the initial conclusions of the meta-analysis–which came out similar to the ones in this report–were retested.

All too often, researchers do not make it clear with their questions whether or not they were asking about sexual encounters that were consensual at the time or truly abusive/coercive encounters that were not consensual at the time they happened. As a result, these two different types of experiences were conflated under the general rubric of “sexual experiences with adults,” and the subjects responded accordingly, lumping together all experiences in such a general fashion. I noticed that same thing one time years ago when I was interviewing an adult woman who had several experiences with adults. When she mentioned that a fairly large minority of them were negative, I wanted to find out what made them negative, so I asked her. She told me those experiences were negative because they were not consensual at the time, but the result of an abusive stepfather and other such members of a very dysfunctional family. The others were older men whose company she wanted and trusted, including one she considered a boyfriend. Once I re-phrased the question accordingly, she adjusted the response appropriately, and the “negatives” dropped significantly.

All the overly generalized questions of “Did you view your sexual contacts with adults positive or negative?” demonstrated is that girls are victims of non-consensual molestation by all the usual sources much more often than boys. However, that section of the Rind Report continues to be either overlooked or conveniently ignored.

As far as the difference between the experiences of boys and girls goes, I think one important factor is that girls are far more naturally inclined to be looking for a personal connection in sex, rather than just something that feels good physically. Even though girls ARE interested in the physicality of sex, girls simply are more inclined to see sex as part of a personal connection reflecting love and care, part of a broader relationship with another person, whether or not that takes the form of a boyfriend-girlfriend or marriage.

And most boys and many young men are blithely unaware of this dynamic, and act accordingly.

So naturally, a girl might think an experience wonderful at the time, seeing it as a way of forming a closer relationship to a boy or a man that they like – and then in retrospect, as the boy or man simply moves on without even looking back, the girl may gradually come to see the act in the context of this new information – that there never was the sort of connection they first thought was there – they will experience a feeling of betrayal even if their partner thought there was nothing to betray. This, of course, can turn an initially positive experience profoundly negative.

Say you see something you really like at a store, and are very happy to buy it at what seems a good price – but when you take it home you discover that the product is not what you thought it was – that the outer appearance disguised serious problems on the inside – that it was not made of the materials that the storekeeper claimed it was made of, and so the product is weak and it breaks after only a couple uses.

Yes, your joy at first purchasing the item was real! But your overall experience would be quite negative. A moment of joy from being deceived (whether that deception was intentional or not on the part of the deceiver) is far outweighed by the loss of time, value, and trust.

This is one of the reasons I despise the law as it is: the more experience a man has, the more likely he is to understand the importance of this personal connection to girls. Boys typically understand nothing and will hurt girls very badly without intending to. And the law as it is pushes girls seeking love into the arms of boys who will hurt them, or towards the most lawless sort of men. The law “protects” girls only from the men who will NOT hurt them – the men who will love them and care for them as persons instead of as objects.

Interesting post. Though it would be possible to overstate the difference, I think that you are probably onto something. The relationship between sex and bonding deserves much more consideration – with regard to both boys and girls.

What you described has merit to it, Baldur. The problem, though, is the assumption that when a girl seeks a sexual encounter out with the hope of something more emotionally substantial coming along with it, that her feelings will last for as long as the boy wants to be with her, including for life. The same thing is often used against MAPs via the assumption that if a girl falls in love with them, then it will be for life, and he will be the one to callously move on from her, thus breaking her heart.

This ignores what a lot of boys have experienced, including me when I was a boy, as well as dating even younger women of legal age as an adult: the feelings of girls can be very fleeting. They may indeed be seeking what you say, but that doesn’t mean that if the boy reciprocates that she won’t suddenly lose interest and switch a desire to share those feelings with someone else who catches her eye a few weeks later. Many boys and men alike will attest to this. Girls are very mercurial like that, since younger people change much faster than older people. Hence, I wouldn’t put all of that on the boy or on the MAP.

A point made by ‘A’ once, regarding the difference in positive outcomes between boys and girls: Penetration, assuming that being young its often their first time and can be awkward and sometimes painful.
when you (and i) were on twitter, I followed you and noticed you followed a guy who wrote a book called ‘perv’…if you’ve read it, what do you make of it?

jedson303: “I find the difference between the reaction of boys and girls interesting”

Yes, it is interesting. I think there are many reasons for this, including the observation that female agency and autonomy have been historically devalued in many cultures, so girls may be more likely to experience coercive and exploitative sexual advances.

But I’d be interested to know more about girls experiences with older girls and women. After all, most of these boys will have experienced homosexual encounters (is that discernible from the numbers Tom?).

Ps: I’m confident that the purported rarity of female paedophilia is an artifact of social attitudes and semantics. Female teachers who love girls are as much a part of boarding school lore as male teachers who love boys, but we don’t hear much about them in the media. Why?

On another tack, as a girl lover, I’m very conscious that girls have been historically devalued in many societies, including the one I live in. I love bold, intelligent little girls and I do all I can to encourage these traits. I’m conscious that girls and women are subject to a lot of unwanted sexual attention from males, and that this is an element of their subjugation.

More specifically, that process of disciplining gender roles through sexual aggression limits girls ability to express their emerging sexuality and exposes them to exploitation and humiliation when they do. It’s sad and it makes me angry, but its true. I’m anxious not to be a part of it, and perhaps that’s why I’m so reluctant to explore sexual feelings in my friendships with girls.

Boys are simply in a stronger position to experiment and therefore less at risk when they do.

I am aware of that Danish research (well, I’m not sure if it is the same, but it was from those years, and the conclusions were more or less the same). However that may be, I fully remember that some researchers discarded the fact that most children reported their sexual contacts as positive by referring to a 100 years old Irish research of people that had been kept as slaves for several years, who told that what they experienced was not that bad.
Among therapists, apparently, the ways to feed their cognitive distortions are infinite!

But how can someone write “sixth and ninth grade schoolchildren”. 15-year-olds are no children!!! In once recent “scientific” article even 21-year-olds were described as children, no joke. It seems it is not easy not to be influenced by the zeitgeist. Who knows, if that continues maybe in 30 years Tom O’Carroll advocats for higher “age of consent”-laws!.

Coming from you, especially, Filip, that is appreciated because you are a numbers man. In fact it was you who told us in a comment here on H-TOC about the Finnish data, and you have given me a lot of tips on various studies and what is important in them, so you deserve plenty of credit for this blog!

>But how can someone write “sixth and ninth grade schoolchildren”. 15-year-olds are no children!!!

Yes, you are right! I think perhaps I was being a bit too keen to emphasise that the respondents were still close in age to the experiences on which they were reporting – closer even than the college students in the Rind et al. meta-analysis.

>Who knows, if that continues maybe in 30 years Tom O’Carroll advocats for higher “age of consent”-laws!.

In 30 years time I will be well over 100 years old. If I am still around, I suspect the only thing I will be “advocating” for in my old people’s home will be an unfailingly prompt supply of cakes and cups of tea!

This is a unique finding indeed, this should be done on younger individuals as well to prove the money grubbing industry (i mean CSA industry).

Ever since finding out one of the hypothesis (the younger the child is, the more positive their sexual encounter was. Not correlated with age if anyone is curious about that.) in one (or a few?) of the studies in the rind meta analysis was supported by the data, I am curious to find out the same for young children on sexual encounters. (That would prove whether the abuse industry & this society is legitimate in its claim of CSA harmfulness rather than relying on some askewed research 😋)

I am very much interested in studies that explore if older minors enjoy sexual contacts with adults more than younger minors – or not. So far I found four studies that show that in the age range of about 11 to 17 years the enjoyment of sexual contacts with older persons does NOT get bigger. In these four studies listed below 11-year-olds enjoy the sex with adults as much as 17-year-olds (or in similar age ranges). This result is for the Fagerlund-et-al-study uncertain because of different results reported by different scientists. If anybody does know of any additional studies about that topic it would be great if you could let us know here.

I am not aware of any studies which show if younger minors up to 10 years old enjoy sex with older persons less or more than older minors 11 years old and older. Do 8-year-olds have lower abilities to enjoy sex with older persons than 14-year-olds? Or more? Alfred Kinsey reported the result that the ability of minors to reach an orgasm got bigger with age. Thore Langfeldt did a small study with the result that puberty did not influence the intensity of the orgasms of the underage boys. It seems we do not now much more than that scientifically. Although some “pedophilic” and “hebephilic” men probably have personal experiences and opinions in this issue.

Nuck ROC: “”That would prove whether the abuse industry & this society is legitimate in its claim of CSA harmfulness rather than relying on some askewed research””

Not wanting to start another round of suggestions that I should be at VP, but surely actual CSA *is* harmful, and the real question is: what constitutes CSA?

Currently, the “abuse” label is assigned categorically according to age differentials and thresholds, without regard to any other factor. This makes the definition of CSA misleading and unreliable, but it does *not* imply that children do not suffer from sexual abuse or that it is not harmful. According to less problematic definitions of sexual abuse, they do and it is.

We would do well do remember this and keep in mind what is uncontroversially abusive, such as coercion, manipulation and any other betrayal of a child’s naivete and trust.

One thing stands out from this particular text like a fighting dog’s balls. When referring to the kids’ recording their experiences in such a manner: “…without time for their memories to be overwritten by distorting influences at a later stage…” this is at the crux of what I have always felt about adults memories — or apparent lack of memories — when pontificating about what “childhood” is, or what it should be.

People of my generation, particularly, growing up in 40s and 50s Britain seem to have entirely forgotten that we had virtually unlimited opportunities for sexual explorations in our almost unlimited free time. Families, then, had frequently broken down because of the war.

Parents, then, very rarely spoke to their children about human reproduction — or anything to do with anything below the waist — so the kids went out and found out for themselves. Usually from older kids.

Yet if you speak to — particularly women — of my age, you will often find that they claim that they went to their marriage beds in ignorance of essential sexual facts!

Even now, in this much later age, I am convinced that there is a kind of “cultural forgetfulness” in adults’ views of childhood as a time of purity and innocence — as though they wishfully think: “…this is what childhood should have been”.

Yes, but wasn’t! Because we know that there is nothing more alive and curious than a child, but let us not confuse the issue with facts, for God’s sake!